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The Patron Saint of Superheroes

“Chris Gavaler Explores the Multiverse of Comics, Pop Culture, and Politics”

November 14, 2022 Marvel Comics and White Supremacy: 1970 (Part 2 of 2)

Last week I focused on The Avengers #73 and the second appearance of the KKK-inspired supervillains Sons of the Serpent. The story arc continues in #74, but first Black Panther asks the celebrity singer Monica Lynne not to appear on bigot Dan Dunn’s TV show again with Black activist Montague Hue.

Black Panther: “I’m asking you as a soul brother!”

Monica Lynne: “Soul Br ..? Then you … Why haven’t you let anyone know before?”

Black Panther: “I thought it was enough to be just a man! But now I know it’s time to stand up and be counted!”

Lynne’s surprise was surprising to me, but it reveals the significance of Black Panther’s costume design. Unlike every other member of the Avengers, his race is ambiguous.

Jack Kirby’s original 1966 Black Panther cover premiere featured the more common superhero mask that exposed the lower half of his face, but was replaced by a full mask presumably for fear of anti-Black backlash. The reverse extreme of the skin-exposing hypersexualized costumes of Black male superheroes, the skin-obscuring became a secondary trend and later included James Rhodes Iron Man, Milo Norman Mister Miracle, and Spawn.

Thomas scripts Goliath (who is Clinton Barton, AKA Hawkeye, during this Avengers period) a King-echoing justification:

“T’Challa only hid the fact that he was black because he wanted to be judged as a man … not a racial type!”

After Black Panther is captured while infiltrating the Serpents, they send out a false Black Panther to victimize “businesses owned by known supporters of the ultra-rightists,” leading to “Speculation that he is both black … and the vanguard of a new type of marauding militant!”

Thomas seems to be reprising to Lee’s 1966 plot in which the Serpents captured Captain America and replaced him with an imposter. The difference emphasizes the fear of racial division driving the story: the fake Captain America was also White and voiced White supremacist rhetoric, and the fake Black Panther appears to be Black (the White imposter wears two masks, the black mask of the Panther costume and also a Black mask indistinguishable from T’Challa’s face) and voices anti-White rhetoric:

“No Black American can rest … while a White American lives!!”

Despite the splash page motto, the White supremacist goal is no longer to drive out foreigners:

“The Serpents want to start a civil war … to set black against white!”

Buscema draws the real and unmasked Black Panther in literal chains shouting, “I shall be free!,” an allusion to slavery and the Civil War.

The Avengers expose the scheme on live TV, revealing that the organization is run by two Supreme Serpents, Hale and Dunn, a Black man and a White man working together.

Dunn: “Of course, you costumed cretins! Did you really fall for our racist act? Were you as misled as the fawning sheep who fed upon our every epithets?”

Hale: “Did you truly think we cared for anyone … for any cause … except power for ourselves??”

Thomas makes Hale’s villainous sentiment echo Lynne’s earlier attitude of selfish indifference. It’s unclear whether Hale intended her to die earlier, or if the attack was orchestrated as manipulation. Either way, Lynne reflects afterwards to Black Panther:

“If only we could undo the harm which a man like Montague Hale has done to … my people! How many minds can a viper like him poison against our cause?”

No one condemns Dunn.

The harm Hale has done to Black people could be understood in two ways. The poisoned “minds” could be White minds now prejudiced against the cause of Black people due to Hale amplifying violently anti-White militancy, or they could be Black minds now prejudiced in favor of that militancy and so against what Thomas implies is the legitimate cause of Black people.

Since Black militancy is linked to Black selfishness, Thomas can’t allow Lynne to return to her initial selfish indifference or to her more recent selfish militancy (including criticizing well-intentioned police), and so he instead has her voice a different cause in the final panel:

“Maybe I’ve lost a singing career tonight … … and gained a new career … a worthier purpose …!”

Black Panther, a slavery-evoking chain sill around his neck, echoes: “so has the Black Panther!!”

The story arc then is Marvel’s lesson for Black people not to direct their political activism in what Marvel considered the wrong way: against police and White people. Since the right way, the “worthier purpose,” is evoked but not detailed or even named, what matters is to not increase national division, regardless of how the national status quo affects Black people.

Finally, one very minor mystery solved. When I first blogged about Sons of the Serpent’s debut in The Avengers #32-33 (September-October 1966), I mentioned that the Marvel Database included this note:

“The plot twist at the end of this story is in extremely poor taste. Having a foreigner who had been a victim of racist violence be revealed to be the mastermind behind it all undercuts the presumed message of racial tolerance and quite literally blames the victim of racist violence for what happens to him. Hawkeye’s final comment (“Boy, if ever there was an undesirable alien, it’s him.) actually SUPPORTS the Sons of the Serpent’s racist attitudes. Even more unfortunately, it’s a plot twist that seems to get repeated whenever the Sons of the Serpent appear.”

Hawkeye’s comment doesn’t appear in that issue, but it does in the two-page summary in The Avengers #73. Or it almost does. According Thomas, Hawkeye said: “If there was ever an undesirable alien, this cat is it!”

The “victim of racist violence” also describes Hale. I agree the anti-progressive plot twist is in “extremely poor taste,” but more specifically it serves Marvel’s message of political moderation during a major period of Black activism.

“The End?” asks Thomas’s narrator in the final panel. “Hardly..!”

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