In 2008, during his presidential campaign,
Barack Obama told a
joke at a charity event. “Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born
in a manger,” he said. “I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my
father, Jor-El, to save the planet Earth.”
اضافة اعلان
And a couple of months prior, artist
Alex Ross made a painting
of Obama depicting him in a Clark Kent-like pose with an unbuttoned shirt
revealing his costume — this one with an “O” instead of an “S” — underneath.
All of this inspired comic book writer Grant Morrison: Why not
create a Black Superman?
And so was born Calvin Ellis, a Black Man of Steel brought to
life by Morrison and artist Doug Mahnke, who envisioned the character as a
beacon of hope who would fight alongside Superman and the other heroes of DC
Comics in an apocalyptic story line titled Final Crisis, which ran from
2008-09. In the narrative, Ellis came from an alternate version of Earth. In
his reality, he was the most powerful man on Earth twice-over: He was Superman and the
president of the United States.
“Final Crisis was kind of a response to the Bush era and that
sense of permanent war and that the bad guys had won,” Morrison said. President
Superman, as Ellis is known, was meant to embody the opposite — “a shinier way
forward,” as Morrison put it. (His teammates included a Black Wonder Woman,
inspired by Beyoncé.)
Fans embraced this version of Superman as an alternate depiction
of arguably the most iconic superhero of all: the Man of Steel, who made his
debut in 1938. Decades later, Superman remains a global hero. His “S” is
recognized around the world, and he epitomizes compassion and the quest for
truth and justice. Recasting Superman as Black has a singular resonance, and
the potential to open up the character to new fans.
President Superman is just one nonwhite version of the Man of
Steel that comic book fans are familiar with. They include Sunshine Superman,
created by Morrison and artist Chaz Truog in 1990, and Kong Kenan, the
Super-Man of China, who was introduced in 2016 by Gene Luen Yang and Viktor
Bogdanovic.
This year, it was announced that writer Ta-Nehisi Coates is
working on a Superman screenplay, and unnamed sources told the Hollywood
Reporter the film would set up a Black Superman. If that character is, in fact,
President Superman, there is an actor who has already expressed interest in
portraying him: In 2019, Oprah Winfrey asked Michael B. Jordan about rumors
that he would play Superman. Jordan was hesitant to play Clark Kent, but, he
said, “I’ll be Calvin Ellis.”
The possibility of a nontraditional Superman getting his chance
at the spotlight is a welcome notion to many. “I didn’t see a lot of
representation that included myself or my friends and family when I was a kid
growing up,” said David F. Walker, a comic book writer, filmmaker and author. “For
every one female character, every one Black character, every one Latino
character, every one queer character, there’s 20 or 30 that aren’t those
things.”
Heroes like Superman and Spider-Man are often recast within
comic stories, though rarely permanently. Characters are sometimes replacements
who temporarily don Batman’s cowl or borrow Iron Man’s armor. Sometimes time
travel or parallel worlds are involved, as with Calvin Ellis, where history
developed differently and as a result so did its heroes.
Still, the back story of a character like Ellis can have deep
resonance for readers of color. Readers learned more about his parallel world
in a 2012 issue of Action Comics written by Morrison and drawn by Gene Ha. Like
the original Superman, he was rocketed from Krypton on the eve of its
destruction by his parents and is found by a couple (notably, both sets of
parents are Black), and as an adult he begins the battle for “truth, justice,
liberty and equality” as Superman.
Walker, along with co-creators Brian Michael Bendis and Jamal
Campbell, had his own opportunity to contribute to the tapestry of DC Comics
with the 2019 debut of Naomi McDuffie, a superpowered Black teenage girl who is
adopted and sets out to learn more about her birth parents. (The character is
being developed for television by director Ava DuVernay.) “The first time I saw
a teenage Black girl cosplay as Naomi I was like, ‘Wow, there is space for you
here,’” Walker recalled. “And I want there to be space for everybody.”
Naomi’s last name is a tribute to Dwayne McDuffie, a popular
Black comic book writer who was known for championing representation in comics.
In 1993, he co-founded Milestone Media, a publishing imprint that centered on
Black, Asian, Hispanic and gay superheroes. The Milestone version of Superman
is Icon, an alien who arrived on Earth in 1839, and was created by Dwayne
McDuffie and Mark Bright. An enslaved Black woman finds Icon’s ship, and he adapts
his appearance, including the color of his skin, to fit in. DC will begin
publishing new series featuring the Milestone characters in June.
In a way, there has already been a Black Superman on the big
screen: In 1997, Shaquille O’Neal starred in “Steel,” which was based on a DC
Comics hero of the same name created by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove. In
his civilian guise he is Dr. John Henry Irons, who emerged to protect
Metropolis in 1992 after Superman’s death. (Spoiler: Superman returned the
following year.) The comic character’s fortunes were considerably better than
that of the film, which a New York Times review described as “a tepid vat of
cinematic sludge.”
A more recent Superman vying for film attention is Val-Zod,
another Black Kryptonian, introduced in 2014 by writer Tom Taylor and artist
Nicola Scott.
The response to the character was overwhelmingly positive,
Taylor recalled. “It was a younger, nicer internet in those days,” he said.
Val-Zod was “such a welcoming, warm, charming character that you rooted for him
— and our fans felt the same way. He came from a harsh planet and the world
needed his light.”
“I’ve said it for a very long time: Everyone needs heroes,”
Taylor continued. “And everyone deserves to see themselves in their heroes.”
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