Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Is switching STAR BOY's race stupid?

That's the opposite of what I want. Dawnstar was pretty preachy about the Native American thing. Tyroc had the 'angry black man' thing going on.

Jacques, on the other hand, was of African descent, *and it never mattered in any way.* That, to me, is damn near perfect. The last thing I want is caricatures or stereotypes.

Thom is not of African descent. He's an alien, who just happens to look like an Earth-ethnicity. He wouldn't represent cultural diversity if was an alien who happened to look Chinese, either. He'd still represent no ethnicity other than Xanthu'an. By introducing Star Boy / Thom Kallor as 'the black one,' I fear that the threeboot has therefore patted itself on the back with this 'racial inclusion' and will never actually have an ethnic Legionnaire.

Just some white folks from Earth (Lyle, Gim, Dirk) and some aliens. Asians, Africans, etc. need not apply, it seems.

'Cause Star Boy doesn't count. He's no more a representation of racial diversity than Chameleon Boy would be if *he* looked black.

On the other hand, if they turned around and said, 'Xanthu was settled by Earth people,' then bang, Thom Kallor *is* actually of African descent, and isn't just an alien dressed up as a brother.

If Sun Boy had been retconned into an African appearance, I'd be much less annoyed, since he's actually from Earth.

I have come into this rather late. But there is one point I would like to elaborate upon. How do you portray a black character? To truly do it well, you need to have several. Think about the Wire, or Homicide: Life the Streets, to name just a few. Both shows are top favorites of mine. Both shows featured an abundance of black characters that were fully developed, and distinct in many ways. Different class, different education, views, etc, etc. As for portraying a black alien. What about Tuvok?

as for Tyroc, that costume is a complete joke. It looks worse than what Luke Cage used to wear. and Invisible Kid II, come on, of all the heroes to face Darkseid, he's the only one to have his hair turn white! With all the retconning going on, someone needs to redo those two or leave them in the dustbin of history.

Thank you! I'm not a native speaker, so hearing that my posts don't leave people with the impression that I'm trying to order a large Pizza Speciale is always heartening.

What was so hysterically funny/morbidly depressing about Tyroc wasn't that he embodied an "angry black man" appropriate to the time he was created in. It's that he overshot that depiction by a mile by being the "angry black man" shown the error of his ways. The Legionnaires, after all, are chiding him: "No, we're not racist, YOU are racist for calling us racist!", and good old Tyroc sure sees the light after they've helped him and his people so nicely.

I've seen similar deflections of blame back onto the actually discriminated-against party elsewhere in comics of that time period, but I can't remember which ones. The actually tacky part, the insulting stereotype rears its head when the writing pretends that race-relation-wise, everything would be totally peachy-keen if only these silly angry black men would realise that whitey knows best. Acknowledging "angry black man's" existence isn't the tacky part, but ripping him out of his 70's African-American reform culture and disregarding or faux-solving any of the legitimate issues he was angry about is.

Now I don't know the context in which they'd be tempted to use that utter charmer of a word, but just from reading it I'd put it under "emphasizing blackness", not under "emphasizing whiteness", as you suggest. To me it seems to state: "Hey, white people, never forget; African equals black, but black people, don't get your hopes up, this guy isn't really one of you, either." If emphasizing whiteness was their intent, they'd probably call him a "Halfaucasian" or whatever else offensive they might come up with.


I agree with Blockade Boy that it's really difficult to pin down what racial/cultural identity actually is and how it should express itself to be considered legitimate representation.

That in mind, yes, I can see what Set considers 3boot Thom Kallor's "lack". Merely outward "blackness" doesn't give him a clearly defined racial/cultural identity - but then I'd probably ascribe the same lack to Danielle Foccart - yes, she has her earth roots, but if they're only being put down on paper once in a while when these little fact blurbs during the Legion Roll Call show up, and don't have any impact on her character or behaviour whatsoever, they don't constitute a realistic racial/cultural identity, either. If you could take them out and the character would still be be exactly the same apart from that one removed reference then these backgrounds are just as empty and "merely outward" as appearance is.

I'm absolutely not opposed to a character having these backgrounds, but I don't consider them the only viable option to cure the lack of diversity in popular media. I also still don't find the "Thom Kallor characters" offensive, especially regarding the story-telling potential and the equal footing with the other Legionnaires their outer-space origins grant them.

Well, at least everyone in this thread seems to agree that comics ought to stop with all that godforsaken stereotyping, and that there should be more diversity in the Legion - I love common ground.

The change of skin color doesn't really make a difference to me, one way or another, except in the sense that if we were to have multiple Legions in multiple universes, the tangents created by changing a character's race (or gender, or species - human to snake?) seem to make the idea less realistic to me.

Mr. Waid would have been better served bring back Quantum Kid or Tyroc or Gear or a new hero if he wanted more racial diversity than changing established characters in that way.

I liked how Violet was sometimes drawn Asian, and Dave Cockrum impressed me as giving Cosmic Boy an Oriental look as well. Tinya as Indian and Karate Kid as Japanese always seemed like a good fit to me.

PS- In a Cosmic Boy mini-series, wasn't it documented that Rokk's direct ancestor was from earth and Polish (Krinski)?

That good'ol Tartar blood-line.

At least all the Starboys had a good run. Poor Giselle lasted three issues before having her race changed.

To explain the color change I propose a missing issue, say where a young Thom, in the misguided belief that pale-face Naltorians only date their own race, scores some,..., let's call it, ProWhite, ....

Yup!

They walk an insanely tight line, in that regard. There are going to be unhappy people if they don't show *any* ethnic characters. There are going to be unhappy people if they introduce an ethnic character and he/she doesn't 'act' enough like a member of that ethnicity. There are going to be unhappy people if they introduce an ethnic character and he/she acts like a caricature of that ethnic group (like any of the Superfriends ethnic characters, Apache Chief, El Dorado, etc.).

On the one hand, they'll get slammed if they introduce an Asian martial artist, because it's stereotyping. On the other hand, they'll get slammed if they introduce a Caucasian martial arts master as some 'great white hope' or 'American Ninja' or something.

No matter what they choose, people will be unhappy with some aspect of the presentation, as humanity still doesn't agree on what is or is not racist offensive portrayals of ethnic characters.

So we've got helter-skelter people like me, annoyed that Dawnstar is an obnoxious caricature of Native Americans (she's *too* Indian!), and equally annoyed that Thom Kallor is an alien in blackface, pretending to be of African descent (he's *not really black!*).

They can't win.