Pretense and bluster aside, there are times when the comics industry seems to be filled with racist jackasses.

Now, that's not a personal indictment. On a personal level, I'm sure they're all fun people, great to sit down for a beer with, filled with amusing stories and anecdotes. However, if these people can seriously sit down and create a book like X-Men #111, and expect the world to accept that a Southern African island nation has a population of maybe twelve Black people, it's either a blatant insult to the intelligence of comicdom assembled or an act of racist obfuscation on the level of an episode of, oh, any episode of Friends.

Don't pick the book up if you haven't already; I'll help here. Genosha's an island fulla mutants, basically. Some have sought refuge from other nations. Some are natives. Almost all of them are extremely pale. Maybe some of 'em are Asian; it's difficult to see details in a horde of 'em. The ones who get close-ups, though, are—with the exception of UN rep Cargill (who, FYI, is American by birth)—whiter than Sunday dinner at Strom Thurmond's house.

However.

An entire nation off the coast of Africa with a Black population less than 50%?

"Harrumph" and "Pshaw."

Of course, there are numerous Black characters who regularly appear or have appeared in various Marvel Comics (Black Panther, The Falcon, Triathlon, Photon, War Machine, the Daily Bugle's Joe Robertson...) and in the X-Men in particular (Storm, Bishop, Cecilia Reyes, Maggot, Misty Knight, Stevie Hunter, etc.). Some of them have their own titles. In personal conversations and in newsgroup postings, no end of people are willing to explain what a great job Marvel and the X-Men franchise in particular have done bridging the racial gap. That's just peachy, but none of those characters can make up for having an entire sub-Saharan African nation with a Black populace that numbers less than 50%. And, short of an act of genocide on the scale of Tasmania (FYI: according to all reports, kids, there are no more Tasmanians, a dark-skinned indigenous people, left anywhere on Earth! Animals ain't the only endangered species!), which would indicate Genosha has even worse blood on its hands than its mutant bruhaha, there's no way this would be possible.

It's not just the X-Men. Watch Star Trek—that ozone hole musta healed up nicely, for all the pale faces there. What? A handful of Black folk and Asians (I can't recall a single Latino, and if you say Chakotay, I'll drive to your house and lobotomize you with a Jar Jar Binks action figure) decided they'd go into space? The whole hot, sunny, wacky planet of Vulcan has one Black family on it? Every frickin' alien race looks like they're from some shack in the Appalachians?

Genosha in particular set me off because, well... okay. Imagine you're reading a comic book. The story takes you to a fictionalized Asian nation, let's call it Treshanoa. You see a street shot of an average day in Treshanoa and everybody is either rockin' afros or looking like Jennifer Aniston. Your brain would scream that something is wrong, and you'd look for answers. Genosha, though? Nation practically fulla largely English speaking, non-Black mutants and humans, off the coast of Africa. Okay, that makes sense...not.

Science fiction, comics and fantasy lore are rife with marginalized or stereotyped (don't get me started on Luke Cage) people of color. The writers themselves are predominately male and white, so their depictions of women and people of color can lack experience and empathy. They can create an African nation with fewer Black people than there are in Idaho. Or maybe all the Black citizens stayed home that day. Whatever. It's a big load of Bantha poodoo.

And as long as people of color are not in positions to write, create and most importantly hire, we'll see the same. As long as the market "ghettoizes" even excellent books like the Milestone product (check Static Shock and the Icon TPB here at NPO for a taste of the best), you'll keep having the same cannibalizing industry of "Bold New Directions" that look "Ultimately" the same, the same dropping sales from the same people who buy less and less each year. Ask a ten year old of color or a young girl in school what was the last comic they read. Chances are you won't like their answers. Check the census, and you'll see those kids' numbers are on the rise, and they don't know or care about comics. It becomes a question of which is the bigger crime—an inbred comics industry that can create such a mockery of humanity and logic, or a whitewashed comics audience willing to swallow it without complaint?

Time to wake up and smell the Negroes.