Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics

Berkeley scholar Scott (Extravagant Abjection) reflects on the importance of fantasy in comic books in this brisk and insightful meditation that examines fantasy “especially as it appears in the struggles against antiblackness and racism... and the fight against homophobia.” The author breaks down his analysis into three chapters: “I Am Nubia” is a close reading of a 1973 Wonder Woman cover that introduced the superhero’s Black twin, Nubia, which Scott recounts first seeing as an eight-year-old. The second, and strongest, section, “Can the Black Superhero Be?” looks at the history and evolution of superheroes including Black Panther, Blade, and Luke Cage, as well as Captain America’s racistly caricatured Whitewash Jones. “Erotic Fantasy-Acts” considers pornographic comics, which he analyzes in the context of the white supremacist ideology that informs mainstream comics: “Porn comics with black male superhero figures,” he writes, “find ways to represent the blackness of their protagonists not as a contradiction of the superhero concept... but as the source of their superpower.” Along the way, Scott seamlessly incorporates the work of such scholars and activists as Frantz Fanon, Alan Moore, and Frederic Wertham. For readers with an academic interest in the topic, this analysis is rich and rewarding. (Jan.)