Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics

by Sean Guynes (Editor), Martin Lund (Editor), Frederick Luis Aldama (Foreword)

In Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, Sean Guynes and Martin Lund bring together a series of essays that contextualize the histories and stakes of whiteness studies, superhero comics, and superhero studies for academics, fans, and media-makers alike. The volume illustrates how the American comic book superhero is fundamentally a figure of white power and white supremacy and ultimately calls for diversity in superhero comics as well as a democratized media culture.
Contributors not only examine superhero narratives but also delve into the production, distribution, audience, and reception of those narratives, highlighting the imbrication of forces that have helped to create, normalize, question, and sometimes even subvert American beliefs about whiteness and race. Unstable Masks considers the co-constitutive nature of identity, representation, narrative, production and consumption, and historical and cultural contexts in forging the stereotypes that decide who gets to be a superhero and who gets to be American on the four-color pages of comic books.
 

Genres: Graphic Novels Comics, History

300 pages, Hardcover

First published January 7, 2020

About the author

Sean Guynes (@saguynes) is a writer, editor, and critic who lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

Reviews

[NZ]

Essay anthology that delves deep into dissecting race/how did it get here/where can it go in comic narratives. On a personal note, I was excited to read this - there is something that has long felt futile about reading comic books and always seeing yourself in The Bad Guy, who is espousing new and sexy ideas, who will inevitably lose to the Masked Status Quosader. There is a space to like comic books and superheroes while also understanding that, without deep effort on the part of the creator, undeveloped narratives of justice are regressive. I mean, wasn't Magneto right? Didn't Professor X fail to accomplish any meaningful integration of mutants into regular society despite believing it was possible his whole life? Doesn't the existence of superheroes mandate a society of inequality exists?

Anyways, I digress. This collection did a great job of synthesizing the history of superheroes and Real Life, how Art Imitates Life, and how lending a critical eye uncovers how surface deep representation is.

Some of my favorites were: Oyola's Marked for Failure, Hicks's Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Alaniz's Whitness and Superheroes in the Comix of Chagoya, and Brown's The Dark Knight. But all the contributions were good! Well-curated. Fantastic Read.

[Guilherme Smee]

Demorei mais de um ano para concluir este livro. Ele é composto em três partes. A primeira delas promete lidar com branquitude, mas quando articula esse conceito, se baseia muito mais na negritude do que em seu oposto, portanto essa seção é muito mais focada em super-heróis negros do que em qualquer construção de branquitude feita nas tramas heróicas. A partir da segunda parte é que o livro se torna realmente interessante, atingindo temas que geralmente escapam do comum quando alguém se propõe a fala das diferenças raciais e etnicas. Um exemplo são as críticas feitas às branquitudes nas histórias dos X-Men. A terceira parte fala de outras identidades que não são nem a negritude e nem a branquitude e que acabam, sim, em um lugar que praticamente não é abordado, mas que existe. É o caso das pessoas racializadas por serem povos originários ou ainda povos asiáticos, abordados aqui, por exemplo numa crítica às tramas de Wolverine e de Punho de Ferro, mas também no Batman dos Novos 52. Embora o livro tenha os seus lugares comuns vale a pena a leitura pelas partes que vão além do óbvio.

[Greg]

The message is worthwhile: the essays I read exposed the white supremacist structure in the superhero stories which I enjoy so much. The medium, academic essays, is a barrier. These are worthwhile ideas bogged down by the pretensions of scholarly writing. Maybe writing in this professorly way gives the book more credibility, but this medium also makes these ideas less accessible to people who do not like reading the verbosity of cultural studies professors in their spare time. If you can wade through the pretension, though, some of these essays will make you rethink and hopefully change your biases.