Comparing Secret History Of Wonder Woman And Nama's Super Black

In both Jill Lepore’s The Secret History Of Wonder Woman, and Adilfu Nama’s Super Black the authors delve into the role superheroes have played in conveying empowering messages and images regarding women and African Americans in American society. Lepore focuses solely on arguably the most iconic female superhero of all time in Wonder Woman, while conversely Nama focuses on a number of different black superheroes, such as Black Panther, John Stewart as Green Lantern, Luke Cage, and Black Lightening to name a few. Although their approaches differ, both Lepore and Nama effectively convey the idea that these superhero icons were and effective means of displaying empowering images and messages regarding women’s and African American’s role in American

Lepore says, “But what the king of the Mole Men and all villains in Wonder Woman share is their opposition to women’s equality. Against each of them, Wonder Woman fights for a woman’s right to work, run for political office, and to lead. When Wonder Woman discovers the lost world of the Incas, she tells the chief’s daughter that she should gain the throne: “It’s time those lost Incas were ruled by a woman!”” (Lepore 217). Here we see that each time Wonder Woman commences in battle with one of her villains, Wonder Woman is not only fighting for truth and justice, but she is also fighting for the equality of woman in all aspects of life. She stands for not only the well being of the American citizen, but more importantly the equality for women everywhere. The views held by Marston on the role of women in American society are clearly displayed throughout Wonder Woman comics during his time as the lead

The first introduction of black superheroes such as Black Panther, Falcon, and to a lesser extent Black Lighting gave African-Americans significant fictional figures to look up to. Up until the introduction of Black Panther in 1966, the existence of black fictional characters that were meant to be looked up to, were almost non-existent. The typical fictional character that children were supposed to look up to was white. Nama talks about the famous doll study that exemplified this fact. He says, “Arguably, Kenneth Clark’s groundbreaking yet flawed doll experiment from the 1950s is a theoretical cornerstone for the racial anxiety associated with an absence of black superheroes and its impact on both black and white children. Clark’s work revealed that when given a choice black children overwhelmingly preferred a white doll to black doll and often associated negative qualities with the latter,” (Nama 9). At the time of this study, there was a clear lack of black fictional characters for African-Americans to look up to. Since then, an abundance of black characters have been introduced. Although some of these characters may have embodied black stereotypes at first, such as Luke Cage, Black Lighting, or John Stewart, their presence in a popular form such as comics