I’m a sucker for those sidebar stories—I was looking at Weird Science Stories of 2008 when I noticed this item, Superman's planet is racially diverse — finally. Maybe it's being a comics fan, where you really have to suspend disbelief sometimes, maybe it's from growing up in the Deep South, but I never questioned the notion that while kryptonite (at one time) came in every color imaginable, Kryptonians only came in white. There was an attempt to address this in the 1970s when it was said a "highly developed black race of Kryptonians" lived on Vathlo Island; they had retained their independence "throughout history (there had never been slavery on Krypton) and did not join the planetary federation, though good relations were maintained." Still, we never saw them visit Jor-El.But we shouldn’t be too hard on Krypton; it wasn't the only monochromatic world in the DC Universe: Adam didn't think it was Strange there were no people of color on Rann; there were no blackbirds among the Hawkmen and Hawkwomen on Thanagar. There were no minorities on Earth past 20th Century and even when the inhabitants of other planets were people of color, it was always one color (blue, for the Guardians of the Universe, for example) and the facial features were always solidly Caucasoid.Sane efforts have been made recently to diversify the legions of superheroes: the new Blue Beetle is Latino, the new Dr. Light is Japanese, the new Question is Dominican-American, and Mr. Terrific (the third-smartest human on Earth) is black. There are several semi-regular minority heroes (Steel, Vixen, Black Lightning), and DC announced plans to merge Milestone characters (Hardware, Icon, Static) into the DC Universe. But could there someday be a minority Robin? Could there ever be a Black Canary who was actually black?And will “traditional” (that is, “white”) hard core fans accept true diversity without labeling it a “PC stunt” as they so often do in their forums?
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