Today, we look at an Avengers/New Warriors team-up that dealt with some heavy issues like racism in the wake of the Rodney King beating.
This is a feature called “A Political World,” where we spotlight 20th Century comic book stories that came out back when comic books were not political at all, unlike comic books nowadays.
Before we get into the comic book itself, let’s set the scene a bit by explaining who Rage is to people who are unfamiliar with the character. During his brief run on the Avengers around 1990, Larry Hama introduced a new superhero who joined the Avengers as a probationary member. Rage was a 14-year-old Black teenager who was exposed to dangerous chemicals that transformed him into a super-strong hero that appeared to be a grown adult. Hama explained the genesis for the character to me in a Comic Book Legends Revealed years ago, “I just always liked the whole Billy Batson thing, where the character is actually a little kid who somehow transforms into a powerful hero. I also liked the whole Aunt May thing, so that that got grafted on as the kindly grandmother. Making the character African-American was third down on the list, but it fit very well, and I changed the rest to make it all fit.”
Release in September 1991, Avengers #341 (by Fabian Nicieza, Steve Epting and Tom Palmer) was specifically a reference to the then VERY recent bating of Rodney King on March 3, 1991, by the Los Angeles Police Department, who were recorded beating the hell out of King with police batons after King had been pulled over after a high speed chase while he was driving while intoxicated. The police officers went on trial a little over a year later and when none of the four officers were convicted, it caused major protests and riots throughout the country.
So that is what Nicieza, Epting and Palmer are specifically referencing when the issue opens up with video footage of New York City police officers beating a Latino teenager…
Since this was New York, Nicieza, of course, was also referencing the August 23, 1989 murder of Yusef Hawkins in the predominantly White neighborhood of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, New York, after a crowd of at least a dozen White teenagers attacked Hawkins, his brother and his friends (with one of the White teenagers shooting the 16-year-old Hawkins to death).
Rage was friends with the boy who was beaten, so when a crowd of counter protesters show up to cause trouble with the people protesting the police, Rage shows up and intimidates them into dispersing, but in the process, it makes it look like he was there as an Avengers spokesperson. The Falcon had stopped by to do some training with Captain America and the two heroes explained to Rage that he was wrong to try to get directly involved in something like this as an Avenger…
I appreciate Marvel’s willingness to make Captain America look pretty square here. “Where’s all of that anger come from?” Gee, Cap, I wonder.
Anyhow, the team of teenage superheroes, the New Warriors (who had debuted only a year and half earlier and was written by Nicieza, as well), show up at the protests to make sure things stay peaceful, which is important, as the counter-protesters are back, but only now they are armored as the Sons of Serpent and have weapons. Rage shows up and gets into a conflict with the Warriors, as he sees them as protecting the counter-protestors. Unbeknown to the Warriors, the villainous Hate-Monger is pushing everyone’s buttons with his hate powers and soon, this is turning into a riot…
And then the rest of the Avengers show up and things get even crazier!
In the next issue, the Warriors actually hold their own pretty well, but even after the Hate-Monger leaves and the effects of his power wears off, Cap continues his, “There’s nothing you heroes can do about racism, just go home,” which is weird, as you’d at least think Cap would invite them to team up to take down the Sons of the Serpent, right? That’s sort of the POINT of the Sons of the Serpent, to make racism into a supervillain so superheroes can punch it away…
There’s a great moment when the Avengers track the Sons of the Serpent down and one of the bad guys hesitates, because he can’t try to hurt Captain America! His fellow Serpent explains that Cap is just a liberal tool. The Warriors and Rage show up (Captain America and the Falcon only just found out last issue that Rage is actually a teenager) and Rage’s hate powers the Hate-Monger until Rage is able to turn off his hate…
Cap, though, then gives Rage this lecture about how Rage can’t get so angry about racism and it just doesn’t sound very convincing coming from Captain freakin’ America. Again, it is impressive how much Marvel was willing to let Nicieza paint the nominal heroes of the comic book series as a bit out of touch…
With Hate-Monger defeated, Cap lets Rage know that he can train with the Avengers, but he can’t be a probationary member any more because he is too young.
The issue then ends with the Hate-Monger now infiltrating a Black group, which is assuredly a throwback to the classic Sons of the Serpent bit where the bad guys often turn out to be Black people or Asian guys just trying to use the hatred for their own purposes. It was a bold idea for the time, but the ending has not aged particularly well, the same as those old Sons of the Serpent stories…
Still, Nicieza dealt with a number of issues that you would rarely see in a 1991 comic book and so it was still quite impressive (and the Epting/Palmer art team was great, as always). I can only imagine how much restrictions Nicieza was dealing with while writing this story. I’m sure he had a number of eyes playing close attention to his story for this two-parter.
Okay, folks, I’m sure you have suggestions for interesting political storylines from the “good old days when comic books weren’t political,” so drop me suggestions at [email protected]!
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