Part One (Black History): Reading the Mosaic

Last Friday, I gave my first academic talk and for the most part I think it went pretty well. For those of you who didn't get to hear it, I'm posting it here. If anyone thinks this is career suicide, let me know by posting a comment and I'll take it down. Questions and comments would be helpful. I'm going to try and transform it for an issue of MELUS

I imagine today that today that many of you do not have the dubious distinction of being a scholar of comics and its fandom. I also imagine that many of you have never heard of the Green Lantern title featuring the Cold War adventurer turned space cop with a magic ring, Hal Jordan or its spin off title Green Lantern: Mosaic, which starred Jordan's African American counterpart, John Stewart. And while I was originally tempted to give you a protracted history of Green Lantern franchise those of you who have seen Kill Bill will appreciate the vision I have of Uma Therman screaming, "How long is this going to last" as David Carradien's character when he proceeds to allegorically explain their relationship through the history of Superman.

However, we are not here to talk about my potential failure to hold an audience's attention. We are here to talk about failures and hopefully unique failures at that. It is for this reason I mention Green Lantern: Mosaic, one of the few comic books to have ever featured an African American as its protagonist. Traditionally, books featuring African American characters have failed artistically - because they have not accurately represented blacks and black culture - and economically - because they have failed to sell enough copies to sustain their prolonged publication. Mosaic, while its failures and successes touch on these issues, managed to fail in a way that runs contrary to the superhero genre: ethically.

Like many popular American genres, the representation of blacks in comics has been vexed. As early comic critic and proponent for censorship, Frederic Wertham noted, depictions of blacks in the 1940s were either comical Sambos or threatening looking Übermenschen to pound into the ground (Wertham, 32). However, after the industry-sponsored censorship board took effect in 1954, much to Wertham's delight, such portrayals were verboten. Unable to fulfill the role of comic jester of faceless threat, blacks remained unrepresented throughout most of the 1950s and 1960s. It was only in the early 1970s when publishers, noting the popularity of Blaxploitation films like Shaft (1971) and Superfly (1972), began producing black characters like Luke Cage, Mosaic's own John Stewart then dubbed "Black Lantern," and Black Lightning. While these portrayals were intended to be positive, they tended to be written, drawn, and edited only by white professionals, who reproduced stereotypical depictions of black culture from other media sources. As Christopher Priest, perhaps, comics most renowned African American creator to date, has noted:

Black society in comic books seems an almost invented culture, as made up as Smallville or the Legion of Super-Heroes' headquarters, sewn together by glimpses of television shows or movies. Black culture as represented by Sherman Helmsley or Jimmy Walker or Richard Roundtree. It's an RPG universe subset Black People, with a list of rules and hair styles and speech patterns, invented for the game, but bearing little resemblance to any actual culture (Priest, http://phonogram.us/comics/powerfist.htm, accessed May 03, 2003).

Black culture becomes as real as Black Lightning's Afro; it's just another accessory. This problem has been exasperated because, although there was an explosion of black characters created in the 1970s, the total number of black characters remains very limited. As such, black characters have been overburdened by having to represent all of African American culture with unprofitable results. Dwayne McDuffie, another successful African American creator, has stated his frustration with writing ethnic characters in an otherwise non-ethnic genre by saying, "As a writer. . . my problem . . . with writing a black character in either the Marvel or DC Universe is that he is not a man. He is a symbol. . . You can't do a character. . . Cage is all black people" (Norman 68 in Brown 31).

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Part Two (Narrative Function): Reading the Mosaic

Gerard Jones, the creative talent behind Mosaic, expressed his concern over being a white writer in charge of depicting African American subjectivity when he wrote sarcastically in the back of the first issue, "Mosaic is two white boys writing and drawing John Stewart. 'Yo, homes! Your script, it's. . . it's. . . it's. . . it's def!' 'Yo, it's easy, man, when my bud's pencils are so fly! that is right, isn't it 'Fly'? That's still au courant in the urban subculture?'" In order to understand and write Stewart effectively, Jones created a character that strayed considerably from the hyper masculine Shaft archetype that the character was originally based upon, and stressed the multifaceted nature of the character and his mind, a mind that Jones could have some things in common with. In an essay that appeared at the end of issue four, Jones described his relationship to Stewart through their mutual and divergent musical tastes. While Stewart likes Streisand and Jones, the Ramones, in the author's words, "Basically, John and I have enough in common that we can figure out what to play when we're together, but we know better than to give each other CDs for Christmas."

Despite the fact that Jones showed an early interest in being capable of writing a black character who was both fully developed and not beholden to stereotypes, the narrative logic of Mosaic is arranged in such a way as to deem this epistemological problem unnecessary. Mosaic takes place on a composite planet - one made up of cities from across the cosmos that have been snatched by a rogue member of the Green Lantern Corps overseers. When the threat of the mad Guardian is eliminated the rest of the Guardians decide that the composite planet provides an excellent opportunity to see what happens when displaced cultures, naturally given to disagree with their neighbors, have to live with one another, and if John Stewart can make such an arrangement work.

On such a planet, where everyone is estranged, where everyone is dislocated, John Stewart blackness is metaphorically tied to being an alien. In the first issue, as Stewart introduces the Mosaic world to his readers, he says, "Get the picture? I'm an Alien. Is that why I'm here? Is this the home I never found, where everyone is an alien?" However, on a planet where black estrangement becomes the normative psychic condition, not only does John Stewart became an alien as it were, but everyone, both alien and American white, become in a sense black.

The connection is made poignantly clear in the final conflict in the series: John Stewart versus a resurgent Klu Klux Klan. Addressing a rally of cross burners, the local Grand Wizard proclaims, I think we can all agree that the African-American is just as alien and evil as any monster from outer space. . ." This sort of conflation occurs again when one of his fellow conspirators talks about their alien neighbors' desires, "They want to mate with human females." Without so much as a pause, another Klu Klux Klan member says, "Stewart can have his pick of all the white women on the Mosaic. He's shacking up with one now. He can push us around with his ring. Why would he want to send us home?" The Klu Klux Klan's position is flawed however not just because it is racist, but because they fail to see their true situation. After dealing with a destructive raid, a Klan sympathizer asks Stewart to see the Klan's position - how cruel it must be to be to be torn from your cultural context in order to serve someone else's means. In a series of aspect panels, which highlight the anger and tension present on Stewart's face, the Mosaic's protector parodies the man's words before cutting him down, "Torn from your native world. . . someone else's purpose. . . cut off from your culture. . . forced to assimilate. Don't I see how cruel that is? Look at my skin." Although John leaves angrily, it is clear that in a fragmented world, both racist and black inhabit the same psychic position.

Although this positioning of the characters complicates normative assumptions of authenticity, the series does not rest at negotiating authenticity purely in psychological terms. Given the mandate to bind these cities together in a functional metropolis, Stewart, an architect when not serving as Green Lantern, decides the best way to do so is physically, by building a long expanse of road through the cities. The purpose for doing so is not to merely allow for unimpeded transportation, but to allow for commerce. As John states, "Goods will bring the Mosaic together. We will create consumption communities here, and we will link them in a web of economic interdependence, just like the web that spreads over the Earth. But to do that we need the road."

This theme of consumption is made apparent in the form of Trendoids, a species who seem to be an allegorical representation of the culture industry. They become a problem for Stewart to deal with when they begin to imitate and commercialize the culture of minority groups much to the annoyance of those being imitated. The Trendoids view themselves as unable to reclaim their original culture as they come from a conquered race, who in order to survive, have for millennia adopted the values of their host culture. John's initial solution is to restore the authenticity to Trendoid culture, however pragmatic architect that he is, he resolves instead to redistribute the Trendoid population so that they are steeling evenly from all of Mosaic's various cultures. In a compositional shot that has Stewart face both reader and Trendoid, he states, "We used to make fun of 'white negroes' on my world. The white be-boppers and beasts. And 'oreos,' The blacks in suits and ties. But in the long run. They brought our peoples closer. We sill talk about plain white rapperes' and 'buppies.' They irritate the purists. But they'll do the same. They'll bridge the gap. I need you to do that for me." While the Trendoids don't understand, they do think it will be fun (much in the same way that the comic the reader has in his hand is intended to be fun). The value of the Trendoids have in uniting the Mosaic, inauthentic as they may be, questions the very usefulness of authenticity. Authenticity in this configuration is used to drive people apart, but hybrid-identities like the Trendoids, the "white negroes" and the "buppies" are figured as being more useful in a project of integration. It is this form of hybrid-identity that the series asks not only the Trendoids to have, but the readers of Mosaic as well in order to help "bridge the gap."

Part Three (Economics)

If it is by making the value of authenticity problematic that Mosaic avoids the common pitfall of stereotypical black protagonists, it is important to address how it avoids the economics failure of low sales. Poor sales have long been a problem for titles that prominently feature African American characters. Although this is more than likely caused by the industry's unwillingness to widen its pool of readers by advertising in the African American community, the logic behind this failure has been best expressed by comics writer and editor Roy Thomas who has stated, "You could get blacks to buy comics about whites, but it was hard to get whites to buy comics in which the main character was black."

At first glance, it may seem odd to state that Mosaic was not a victim of low sales, as it ran for only eighteen issues from June 1992 to November 1993 - a time of great financial growth in the industry. Relative to other black superhero titles, the length of its run is in the mid-range, between Luke Cage's nearly fifty issue run, but better than Black Lightning's eleven issues, or Black Goliath's five issue foray into the world of super-heroics. However, what is important to note is that Mosaic was not canceled because it was unprofitable, but because of the fear that it would become so. As Gerard Jones related to the fan press, the series was not canceled because it was performing badly but because DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz and senior editor Mike Carlin "felt it would inevitably lose sales, although I don't feel the evidence was there for that." The failure then is not in the cancellation of the title; the cancellation of the title because DC feared the title would fail, reflects a much deeper failure in terms of rhetoric and by extension ethics. This type of failure illuminates the temerity of DC Comics management to speak to, as Mosaic endeavored, comics' core constituency as more than just fans or consumers and to encourage these fans to be more poetically minded.

Part Four (Rhetorical Function): Reading the Mosaic

For all its talk about politics and race, it is unlikely that Jones cared particularly much for either in his fiction work. Before becoming a professional comics creator, Jones publishing a book on comics where he criticized Denny O'Neil and Neal Adam's well thought of tenure on Green Lantern/Green Arrow, a tenure where O'Neil brought the political and racial conflicts of the day to the forefront in order to give comics what was then termed "relevancy." Jones felt that the title was "ultimately unsatisfying" because "it was hard to believe that the protector of an entire galactic sector could fall apart at the sight of a slum unless, that is, a writer contrived it so." This sentiment expressed itself while Jones was working on the principle Green Lantern title in September of 1992, when he scripted a scene that made explicit reference to Green Lantern/Green Arrow's most famous scene. In the original Green Lantern meets the indignation of an elderly black man who asks him, "I been readin' about you. . . how you work for the blue skins. . . and how on a planet someplace you helped out the orange skins. . . and you done considerable for the purple skins! Only there's skins you never bothered with! The black skins! I want to know. . . how come!?" A shamed face Jordan can only look down and responds hesitantly, "I. . . can't." The mock up retains the same basic composition, but replaces the black man with a blue skinned alien who is given traditional African American facial features. He asks Jordan not what he has done for blacks or other minority groups, but what he has done for aliens. Jordan, seemingly in on the joke, turns not to the alien or the floor, but to the reader and responds, "Now I ask you. . . what am I gonna do?"

The reason why Jones was so reliant on the idiom of the political in Green Lantern: Mosaic was because it was the only tool the genre left at his disposal to transform his work into something that could be deemed literary and himself into what he really wanted to be: a comic book auteur in the mold of Alan Moore and Frank Miller. And although Moore and Miller's mid-1980s work dealt with the political without dealing with race in any concrete way, working within the Green Lantern franchise, John Stewart's race seems like the most obvious way to achieve, what he chided O'Neil for, forced "relevancy." This reluctance to include political material was a times in Stewart's own desire to be more like Hal. In one sequence we catch John reading reprints of 1960s Green Lanterns. A smile on his face betrays a deep satisfaction and the envy that unlike Jordan he can't win his fights by "invoking arcane scientific principles."

No matter how resistant Jones might have been to doing a political book, nonetheless he realized that the politics of the Mosaic was his best opportunity to achieve the artistic status that he desired so fervently in the letter pages. Discussing his time working in a used bookstore, Jones told his audience, "I became more convinced than ever that I would Die in Agony if I did not Become a Writer." Working within the formulaic world of superheroes he needed John in order to not just be a self-described "Hack," just as the usually narratively subordinated John mentions needing the Mosaic world, to find his own voice. Addressing the reader once again, John informs us that, "the courage to use your own voice. That's the test of maturity. That's the proof of seriousness. Maybe that's my mission here. To find my voice."

Of course voice means nothing if you don't have an audience, and it is here where Jones's rhetoric and the form of the comic narrative begin to reinforce each other. An unusual formal device utilized throughout the Mosaic series, particularly given the genre, was to have Stewart speak directly to the audience, convincing the reader of his position and his goals. However, as the series progressed, other characters were allowed to speak directly to the audience and give their point of view. For instance, the issue dealing with the Trendoids begins with a Chicano low rider, announcing his annoyance about the cultural copycats. The issue then follows the low riders until he meets one of Stewart's teenage assistants, who then takes over the narration. However, while they are both capable of speaking for themselves, neither of them are capable of managing the Mosaic. It is only when John takes over the narration in this sequence, that progress is made. While he still allows others to speak, he selects those from the community that he wants to represent and shows his mastery over them on the next page by sitting on top of the images of those talking.

This formal aspect is reproduced textually in the letter pages of the issue. While it was not unusual for writers to answer fan letters themselves, it was unusual for those letters to be so heavily edited and sandwiched by the author's own words and commentary. Just as Stewart selects those voices which will speak for their respective communities, Jones chooses which letters and what part of the letter to include in his text, while providing commentary on each. Just as Stewart is capable of shaping if not his audience, then at least the perception of his audience.

Early letter pages are filled with fannish questions concerning the limits of John's power ring and demands for favorite characters to appear. As one reformed fan admitted in a later issue, they initially bought "Mosaic for continuity's sake. In other words, I didn't want to miss something in Mosaic that I would need to know in Green Lantern or [Justice League Europe] or whatever." However, as the series progressed more and more fans wrote in either to compare the series favorably to DC Comics more avant-garde Vertigo line or to discuss their own experiences with race vis-a-vis the comic. Although a sure sign of the affective fallacy, these letters nonetheless displayed the transformation of readers who would pick up a title merely for the sure thrills of keeping track of characters and plot threads, to those who were willing to discuss race in a provocative way. Indeed, one of the most interesting facets of the series developed when Jones printed an excerpt from a fan named Shander Tabu Mychal Fullove which accused Stewart of being a traitor to his race, "A man who looked objectively at the decadence and oppression of white society would not stand for its recreation once he has the power to do something about it." He then went on to call John Stewart's white girlfriend a "cave-tramp" and to state in capital letters, "A black man who has grown up under pressures such as John will not be able to settle for anything less than black companionship! Jungle Fever was fiction!" And while this is hardly an enlightened view of race relations in the United States, people angry with Fullove's letter and interested in Jones's request for more letters on the topic of race, were more than happy to write in with more nuanced views.

It is here where the two most interesting failures occur. In creating an audience that would talk about race, Jones had desired to remain authoritarian in his role of author. He would allow for speech, but would be responsible for managing it, much in the same way that Stewart allowed for dissent, but set the parameters and prerogatives for the Mosaic's growth. However, through interacting with fans, Jones was loosing his authorial power as innovating genius. Halfway through the series, the author stopped answering letters directly because as he wrote, "I find arguing with you here every month is threatening to affect the way I write Mosaic stories. . . Not good: the pieces of the mosaic have gotta fall where they gotta fall." Indeed, the critiques of the militant African American woman on screen right now (scroll up) seem to be lifted from that month's printed letter by Fullove. The failure of rhetoric here, and where I believe the series would have developed into a much more interesting document is if the language of the fans could have managed to find its way into the text. This would not have questioned Jones's ability to manage the story, but it would have challenged his desired role of genius.

However, the greatest ethical failure of the series comes not with the cancellation of the title, but the decision to cancel it, and the fear that motivated that cancellation> In this decision, the industry revealed its frailty - a frailty that is disturbing since it seems so many of our popular cinematic myths are now being ripped directly from the comics page. While it is unreasonable to expect editors and publishers like Carlin and Levitz to have the moral courage that Green Lantern showed in running the Mosaic experiment, the retreat that DC management made with so little at stake, betrays a temerity that does raise ethical concerns. Although Jones was clearly creating a series out of artistic self-interest, nevertheless the byproduct was a publication that, although probably never capable of challenging politics en mass, and given the cultural politics of Mosaic's narrative, capital, did seem poised to transform a segment of fandom from Comic Book Guy to politically motivated anti-racist citizen. In the final analysis, the ax dropped on Mosaic shows favor to certain types of safe superhero narratives and denies the validity of a transformation more significant than taking off of one's glasses. Indeed, all it shows is its short sightedness.

Any typos or grammatical errors are the result of retyping all of this. Any comments that you have regarding content or argument would be loved and cherished.