Worst Things Ever: The 5 Most Egregious Cases Of Intolerance in Comic Books

Superheroes can't always be awesome. While Batman is padding his fists to punch clay monster faces, Peter Parker is still a pizza-delivering virgin. And while Thor is soaking up a Midgard female's genitals with his roaring Nordic penis, Aquaman is still Aquaman.

The Golden and Silver Ages of comic books, which together span from the 1930s all the way to the 70s, gave us some of the world's most treasured cultural icons. Or, if you like, a lineup of mentally unstable ubermensch and hysterical lingerie models using tissue thin premises to spin kick escaped lunatics.

So I've been increasingly wondering what, if anything, comic books have actually ever done for us. For example, no-one I know who claims to like comics books is anywhere near old enough to have lived through those supposed Golden and Silver Ages and barring, what? The first two Burton and Nolan's Batmen, Spiderman 2, Superman 2, the first two Arkham games and arguably a few of the cartoon series, even the comic book garbage of recent memory far outweighs the good.

And taken violently out of context, much as I'm about to do here, these great eras of nerd culture add nothing to the zeitgeist but a pathological distaste of ethnic minorities, women and fat people.

Fatties

Being 'fat' today is much like the medical state of 'alive' except more fun because pizza bagels. To comic writers however, being fat is more like zombieism - a total, all-consuming definition of self and unkillability as a bonus. Let me show you what I mean.

This incredibly unlikely heroine is Miss Etta Candy. Obviously. And in some writer's head she was a quirky companion to the pantless Wonder Woman. To everyone else, her existence was a never-ending chance for the Amazonian superheroine to be a massive, judgemental bitch.

And, surprise! It totally was. 

But if you didn't know any better, you'd think Etta Candy was an advertisement for making your flesh taste like fudge to indulge the space crocodiles that will one day inevitably invade and devour us all. During her long, long tenure as Wonder Woman's official sidekick, she talked about nothing but the fabulousness of sweets and their application in deadly confrontation.

Eat candy: learn krav maga.

Now, I might not know much about the gentlemanly art of hand to hand combat first hand because I absolutely don't. What I do know about is stupid nerd fantasies. So when things like the UFC started and MMA got popular, I was with most people in wishing that some secluded Shaolin monastery would hear about this new fighting tournament and send its best to levitate into the ring and fireball a kickboxer to death. But the sad fact is, most people's experience of fights are drunken slappings outside nightclubs with the all the elegance of a bonobo handjob but less enthusiasm. Which is why it is so especially annoying that all fat people in comic books fight like pretty much everyone does in real life.

Every fat attack in a comic is a desperate launch crotchward. Every submission just sitting on a wriggling villain's chest until he gives up or the authorities arrive. And for a medium dedicated to angsty teenage wish fulfilment, this is a bizarrely realistic stance to take. I mean, it's not malnourished street hoodlums that Etta Candy's smothering with her muffin top, but mostly Nazis and mythological monsters. And any student of history would know that Obese Tantrum Fu and being 90% caramel by volume wasn't how Western civilisation beat either of those things.

Little Boys

It's always important to remember when discussing these more archaic comic books that 'Gay' wouldn't be invented until the late 60s, at least. So a lot of the seemingly grotesque chemistry in these old strips can mostly be attributed to the authors trying to crowbar in role models of a similar age for the main demographic to identify with.

Alright hold up, got to stop you there. Relatable characters is one thing, but pressing your trouserless crotch against a defenceless child in tights is veering more into predatory than paternal territory. Damn. Why is it that the more I think about comic books, the more I'm reminded of organised religion?

Women

Do you dream of writing comic books? Here's a quick tip. When designing your obviously white, male lead, begin by sketching a figure that both mocks the paltry efforts of anabolic steroids and human physiology simultaneously and then squeeze the bulgey result into latex. Sure, that costume is going to reek of salty ape whey and shark hormones, but it'll do the basic job of giving tiny, wheezing introverts something physically impossible to aspire to; and that desperate aspiration means one thing, my friend: nerd money. The cheapest kind of money there is.

Now, I'm not fluent in fake Viking/Renaissance faire wench, but I think this translates as 'Give me your allowance, bullied human child'.

Women on the other hand, are less realistically represented. Since the 80s, they tend to look like four oily grapefruits glued to a lamppost.

We're back to the age-old excuse of wish fulfilment here, which I do get. I understand that this is a primarily young, male demo. I understand wanting to capitalise on the sexual neuroses of that demo. And I understand the implied Brazilians literally all of these women must have, because the reality of pubic hairs weaselling out of their spandex onesies would probably be gross and hard to draw.

But it is not enough to say that women in comic books are portrayed as powerful or in control because they just aren't. It's the female members of the X-Men and Justice League and Super Friends that have the most spectacular emotional break downs and impulse control failures. And I'm including the Incredible Hulk here. Whose superpower is entirely and only that.

That's the legendary mistress of lightning, Storm! Freaking out because she suddenly remembered she's meant to be claustrophobic while battling in an underground chamber that would embarrass most cathedrals for floor space. That doesn't make any flavour of sense. You wouldn't have the chance to have a panic attack there if you genuinely were claustrophobic because you'd have killed yourself and everyone on board when you were squeezed into the cockpit of the Blackbird on the way there.

Asians

Wonder Woman in particular couldn't even approach the concept of not slapping a Jap. I'm not sure it was really her fault. She just couldn't help herself.

And let's not forget that Marvel designed the physical embodiment of everything USA! And they certainly don't have any historical reason to dislike the Japanese.

Pearl Harbour wasn't enough, motherfucker?!

If you're thinking that any of the other Asian races are more tactfully represented, you'd be as predictable as you were transitional, imaginary idiot.

If anything, the depiction of the Chinese is even worse. Eyes get stretched up, teeth get bucked and Rs get dropped with palpable enthusiasm.

Wait, yellow skin gloves? You mean you can masquerade as Asian just by wearing marigolds? If you really were that stupid and racist you'd attack your wife with a bread knife every time you caught her washing up. And what does it say about Batman that he'd be fooled by this mind-blowingly racist 'trick'? Surely this: The last thing Alfred ever heard was "What have you done with my butler, strange Chinaman cleaning my toilet?!"

Blacks

Marvel couldn't trust a black guy with superpowers so an early result of their attempts at capitalising on black youth readers was a man named Luke Cake. Luke was a complicated guy. For one thing, he couldn't magically move things with his mind or own a freeze ray.

Instead, he was perpetually angry but given insanely puritanical censoring laws (which gave rise to absurd bans on words like 'flick' in case the ink on the 'l' and 'i' ran together and it looked like Spiderman was screaming "look out, he's got a fuck knife!") wasn't allowed to swear. So in the end he simply had to spew streams of fabulous nonsense and punctuate his displeasure by putting a heavyweight fist through something inanimate.

Arguably, this demonstrates more stupidity than intolerance on the part of the writers. And if you like, you could explain away everything up to this point with a slovenly lack of cultural research and surrender to clumsy contemporary stereotypes. Up to this point. 

I present, Mr Whitewash Jones:

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. 

That is not ok. Not by any possible metric. There is just no possible excuse you could give for it. Just looking at it and not immediately trying to kill whatever drew it makes you culpable.

FUCK. 

We live in a more sensitive world now. But it's all relative. People whine about political correctness gone mad, so let's hope that when drawing something like this grotesque mockery of the human form today, you're hands would at least know you were wrong for it.