Diversity

Everywhere we turn today, we see diversity in all iterations of comic book story worlds. People of color and women are behind and in front of the camera lens in many of today’s wildly popular comic book films and TV shows. Netflix brought on African American music journalist and TV writer Cheo Hodari Coker to bring Luke Cage onto our smaller screens. Patty Jenkins gave a feminist touch to Wonder Woman. Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther showed the world how hungry audiences are for a vibrant and vibrant and varied Black superhero cast. Maori director Taika Waititi centered Thor: Ragnarok on a nonbinary superhero and a postcolonial imaginary. With Australasian James Wan directing Indigenous (Polynesian and Pawnee) actor Jason Momoa as Aquaman, questions of surveillance of racial identities are put front and center. Diversity in mainstream and indie in-print comics is making tremendous headway too. From fully realized gay characters like Kevin Keller in the Archie Comics universe and Anishinabe-Métis Elizabeth LaPensée’s Indigenous women in Deer Woman, to life for Arabic and West African French Parisians in the work of Caza (Philippe Cazaumayou) and Farid Boudjellal and Inoue Takehiko’s exploration of differently abled Japanese athletes in REAL (2008–present), no stone is left unturned. Indeed, we can confidently say that when it comes to diversity in world comics production (mainstream, independent, and alternative), we are seeing a renaissance.