Hey everyone, welcome to a special edition of Heroes Like Us.
If you're new to the series, basically Heroes Like Us is a series where we look at identities
and then we look at comic book characters that have that identity.
There's about 40 of them up so far.
They're super interesting and they're fun to research and they're fun to present to you.
I was able to go to a convention last weekend called Comic Con Revolution and there was
a panel about representation in comic books and it pairs up perfectly with what we're
trying to do here.
So one question specifically, I wanted to share the answers from the panel.
And it was about how to write diverse characters especially if you're from NOT that population.
You know, as a white male, how can I tell the story of people of color.
You know, that's maybe a struggle that a lot of comic book writers and creators might have to face.
So there's some super interesting answers so I'm going to show you some clips but I
want to prep you on who is at the table.
First up is Tara Avery, who is part of an organization called Prism Comics, which is
a non-profit that celebrates and promotes both LGBT stories and creators.
They actually give grants to people who get published and they're trying to share those
stories more widely.
We also have Sebastian Kadlecik, who is the creator of a story called Quince, which is
about a 15-year-old Mexican girl who gets powers on her 15th birthday and she only has
them for a year.
So what do you do and how do you make a difference?
Thirdly we have Scott Lobdell, who is one of the creators of Generation X.
He wrote the arc where Northstar comes out as gay.
And then he also introduced the character called Bunker, who is a gay hero in the Teen Titans.
So he's written a lot of stories that have been both received positively and negatively,
but it's undoubtable that he has quite a resume in the comic book world.
So...When asked, "How do you write diverse characters?"
Here are some of their responses.
Well, if you're not queer and you're not POC, and you want to include POC or queer characters,
the thing you ought to do is... maybe talk to some POC and queer people.
Actually find out how they feel and what maybe they feel would be good representation in the story.
It really is telling when somebody who's never met a gay person or doesn't know any asian
people and they write a character that's asian or gay or whatever and it's all wrong.
It's all based on what they saw on TV.
One thing to think about that I think is important, is that I...
Because there's so few characters, whenever a character manifests, there's a lot of pressure
on that character to be everything for a particular group.
And what I've discovered is you're better off just writing a character and not trying
to write a character that represents everything.
There's one character for Red Hood and the Outlaws, he's a brilliant scientist who experiments
on himself and he becomes this kind of monsterous dragon character.
And to me, that's the thing.
That's the character that has a heart of gold but he's a monster.
And I got all these tweets saying "Lobdell is racist" because he can only... when he
does a black character, he has to be a monster!
That's the only way he can write black characters, by turning them into monsters.
And I'm like...
You know, I've invented so many black characters and they've been heroes, they've been villains,
you know, some characters become monsters.
But the thing is...
It's...
I hear it all the time.
But I can't worry about it, because I'm not trying to represent you know, all blacks or
all gays or all transgendered.
All I'm trying to do is write a story with this character and I'd say the same thing
to you, you know, don't try to... you know, don't feel you have to try to represent everybody.
Because everybody at this table has a different experience from everybody in the audience and so..."
Um, for me, since Quince is so much about a young girl and the quinceanera is traditionally
about transitioning from girl to woman...
I reached out to a very talented female writer and what she brought to it...
I've been a fan of hers for a really long time and I knew she was amazing.
And she brought this... she hadn't really done superhero comics either, which I think
may have helped as well, same with the artist.
So you'll see in there, that it's just very... it's not what you normally expect and everybody's
bodies are different, everybody's...
Her reactions are very "What is this?"
It's all very natural and Lupe is definitely not like so strong and awesome at the beginning,
she is kind of bumbling and doesn't really know how to do it.
So that's a maybe specific example but I think that it's...
It's finding the nuance in people, in any character, I think it's finding the nuance.
I think that's such an awesome question.
If you're interested by any of those people, there are a bunch of links in the description
about the stuff that they are working on and places to find out about their work.
So thanks for watching.
You're going to see other clips from that panel inserted when it makes sense into other
Heroes Like Us videos.
So...
Thanks and we'll see you next time!