the vynsane asylum

I've noticed something lately: comics aren't as diverse as they might at first seem. It's not just comics, but mass media overall. I'm not trying to be PC here, but think about it:

"Diversity" means "a few more women, a few black guys, maybe a black woman, a Japanese and Arabic character or two, a Latino (almost always Mexican), and a character or couple who beat you over the head with the fact they're gay. Possibly a Native American of ambiguous tribal origin, but that's what we did in the 1980s."

How many Vietnamese characters in comics can you name? Aside from Firefly from GIJoe, who I bet you didn't know was Vietnamese since he pretended to be Japanese most of the time. We fought a fucking war over there and had a massive immigration of pro-American Vietnamese just a generation back. The mythology might not be as immediately striking as, say, Japan's ninjas and samurai, but there's stuff to be mined in any unique culture.

How many Filipinos? Batman makes a point of telling us he is an expert in a Filipino martial art (eskrima). Who the fuck taught it to him? Again, huge American influence over there and a large population here. I accidentally found some stuff on Filipino magic and superstition, and it practically screamed, "Awesome potential for a comic book character here!"

What is Cassandra "Batgirl II" Cain? She might be Vietnamese, Filipina, Laotian, but who the hell knows? I figured it was discussed in the years I wasn't reading, but a Google search reveals everyone who was reading in the intervening ten years or so is as clueless as I am.

How many homosexuals who are characters who happen to be homosexual, rather than practically introducing themselves by saying, "Hi, I'm Batwoman, and I'm a lesbian!" The Pied Piper from Flash is all I can come up with. Renee Montoya before they made her the Question, though I don't recall her sexuality being discussed one way or the other prior to that.

Hawaiians? Non-Arabic Africans aside from Storm and Black Panther? Inuits aside from Kwinn the Eskimo from (again) GIJoe? Mongolians? Turks? Armenians? Non-Russian Eastern Europeans?

Seriously, where the fuck are all these people?

they're not writing comics, so they're not in them?

seriously, with how much white and pasty there is in the comics industry, i'm amazed anyone does a half-decent job of writing women, much less different races/cultures.

but how many white folk are in the comics they make in laos, huh? riddle me THAT!

If there are Laotian comics, they're not going for a global audience the way Americans are.

And Portacio is Filipino, so why wasn't some member of Wetworks? Or maybe one was. Or they all were. Who could tell?

Isn't Karma from New Mutants Vietnamese?

I do think that some comic creators try and introduce different ethnicities, but the problem is the characters never catch on or have any importance in the mainstream. I give Commcast (a mutant from the 90's series X-Force and later brought back as an ally of Cable in the Cable/Deadpool series) as an example. He was definitely of middle-eastern descent, but not in a stereotypical jihad throwing, turban wearing way.

For every breakthrough popular character like Deadpool, there are half a hundred characters that nobody remembers. Some of them are probably minorities.

I actually only discovered she was Vietnamese a week or so ago. I was never into New Mutants as much as other people seemed to be, and the whole "speaking French all the damned time" threw me off.

Funny thing, I discovered this while lurking on a comics forum, and people kept asking why she spoke French every other word, and other folks would respond, irate, with something along the lines of, "Don't you know your history? The French colonized Vietnam! Everyone speaks French there!"

News flash: that's bullshit.

I just thought of another Vietnamese comic character. The Bengal, onetime foe to Daredevil, and more recently part of the Avengers Initiative secret ops team, is vietnamese.

Apparently, Geoff Johns just created the first Arab-American Green Lantern.

Discuss.




Or don't. I don't care. DC eats a grain silo full of dick.