Representation In Comic Books

Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, and Thor these are some of the biggest and most popular names in comic book history. Years of popularity have made these heroes some of the most well-known characters in pop culture. Ask any man woman or child to name a hero and chances are one of these heroes will be the one that comes to mind. These characters once defined what people thought superheroes were and for a long time, nearly every other superhero was just like them. For years comic books typically followed the trend of having a straight, white, male protagonist that is until just a few years ago.

In recent years, there has been a huge migration in the representation of women, people of color (POC), and people of different sexualities

Representation in comics has been a growing source of controversy in recent years with many questioning whether the creator and audience demographics were representative (Kirkpatrick, Scott, 2015, 120-124). For a long time, comics were drawn by white men for white boys this evident by looking back at the classic heroes of early issues. Many of the original superheroes were (or drawn to appear as) straight white men because that was the perspective that the writers knew (Barnett, 2015). Eventually, the writers began to branch out their characters but even then the earliest characters suffered from misrepresentation. In order to avoid any further false representation, the characters need to come from actual perspectives. It seems that comic book companies have seen what needs to be done because “Both (Marvel and DC) are bringing in more marginalized voices as creators, hiring more women, more people of color, people from religious minorities, and QUILTBAG people”(Underwood, 2015). With a wide array of voices each with different writers have been able to create and will continue to create a plethora of characters and stories.

Before touching upon the recent changes made to several classic comics, it is important to understand that change is an important part of writing comics. If one were to look back in the history of any comic book character they would see that over time multiple tweaks were used to spice up their stories. Comics have been around for over eighty years and characters such as Superman and Batman have been around almost the entire time. Characters such as these who have had a long serialization often need something to keep their stories current and exciting that is when writers are forced to shake things