Robins of the Future, Glimpses of the Past

Detective Comics, #27, in DC’s new numbering is a collection of out-of-continuity Batman stories inspired by how that character debuted in the first volume of Detective Comics, #27.

I wasn’t thrilled. The most Robin-heavy story shows four of Batman’s companions from the 1986-2011 continuity returning to the bat-cave to celebrate Bruce Wayne’s birthday. Peter J. Tomasi’s tale aims too hard to please fans by avoiding all sign of loss. Damian is a trenchcoated crusader as in Batman, #666, but, unlike what that story told us about that future, Dick Grayson is still alive. Dick even has both eyes, unlike in the current Batman Beyond series, and blue fingerstripes. Tim Drake is still active too, also unlike the Batman Beyond continuity. Barbara Gordon is walking again. Even Alfred is alive, and Bruce can still kick butt. It’s a story nominally about aging with no actual change or physical deterioration.

Another story set in another future introduced a new Robin for a version of the 23rd century.

This is the only glimpse of the character. His name and history are blanks.

I’m not the only comics history fan who saw this image and found myself thinking of Dwayne McDuffie’s December 1989 memo to colleagues at Marvel about the lack of diversity in the publisher’s pantheon. McDuffie wrote:

In the past year, 25% of all African-American super-heroes appearing in the Marvel Universe possessed skateboard-based super powers. In an attempt to remain on the cutting edge of comics, I hereby propose a new series that will fully exploit this exciting new trend…

Teenage Mutant Negro
THRASHERS

When a group of teen-aged negroes from cosmic-powered skateboards, their lives are forever changed! A team of distinct characters join together, swearing an oath to use their powers for good.

ROCKET RACER: A black guy on a skateboard.

NIGHT THRASHER: A black guy on a skateboard.

DARK WHEELIE: A black guy on a skateboard.

And their leader, a mysterious black guy on a skateboard known only as “that mysterious black guy on a skateboard.”

Rocket Racer and Night Thrasher were in fact two new heroes in the Marvel Universe. I think Dark Wheelie was just a joke.

Less than four years later, McDuffie cofounded Milestone Media with three other African-American comics writers and artists—Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek T. Dingle. They aimed to fill a market and cultural gap with comics about an array of superheroes of color living in the Midwest city of Dakota.

Of the Milestone heroes, the most successful proved to be Static, created by McDuffie, Robert L. Washington III, and John Paul Leon. Static was a teenager. He had a superpower, controlling electricity. He was black. But he didn’t have a flying skateboard!

No, he had an electromagnetically levitating disk, at first a garbage can lid and later a manhole cover, that he stood on as it flew through the air. Very much like a, well, flying skateboard.

Dwayne McDuffie, Static, and Clarence Thomas

Early last month I caught up on Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool, a collection of two miniseries from the last two decades featuring the young superhero Static. With his smart mouth, nerdy real life, and lack of a millionaire crime-fighting mentor, Static is much more like Spider-Man than like other teen heroes I could name, but I’m trying to sample all the basic literature.

Static was one of several characters that writer Dwayne McDuffie co-created for Milestone Comics, founded in the 1990s to feature superheroes of color. Static became the best known through an television cartoon. More recently DC Comics bought the Milestone properties and, in its syncretic way, incorporated McDuffie’s city of Dakota into the DC Universe. McDuffie scripted the Justice League for several months, and Static worked with the Teen Titans.

McDuffie died unexpectedly last week after heart surgery. That produced an outpouring of rue and remembrances from comics pros and fans. Several people linked to McDuffie’s 2000 essay about learning that Justice Clarence Thomas enjoyed Milestone comics:

He really liked Hardware, he said, but his favorite was Icon, a title that featured a character who is, like himself, a black conservative. There was more to the conversation but I missed most of it due to the small stroke I'd just had.

The thing is, while Clarence Thomas likes my stuff, I most decidedly don't like his stuff. Look, I'm politically to the left of… well, everybody, actually. On the other hand, Justice Thomas is a truly uncommon creature, a black political conservative. Now, if you only see black men on cable news talk shows, where all black men are conservatives (Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Alan Keyes, Armstrong Williams) you probably don't think this is unusual. Well trust me, it is.

It's really quite difficult to find an African-American who (like Justice Thomas) was alive during Jim Crow, who actually saw the Voting Rights Act end legal discrimination at the polls, and who is the successful beneficiary of Affirmative Action (but now says that he's against it). It was easier to justify my character Icon having those beliefs; he's also a space alien who can fly. . . .

The real problem didn't come to light until I sat down to write the next script for Icon.

And couldn't.

Every time I started to write dialog for Icon, I froze. "What will Clarence Thomas make of this?" I'd think, "Am I unwittingly aiding the black neocon movement?" Fortunately, I was able to get back into the game in a few weeks (and fill-ins by Kurt Busiek and Jackie Ching kept the book on schedule until I got my chops back).

Thomas mentions his childhood fondness for comics in his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, specifically mentioning “Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and Kid Colt, Outlaw, the misunderstood western heroes,” as well as “superhero comics, particularly Superman, Green Lantern, Flash and Spiderman [sic].” That book doesn’t suggest that he maintained the hobby as an adult, however.

Also worthy of note: McDuffie’s 1989 memo at Marvel about young black superheroes on skateboards. (Static rides around on some sort of flying manhole cover instead.)