Ethnic stereotypes in comics

Reflecting the changing political climate, the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in comic books have also evolved over time. This article is intended to document and discuss historical and contemporary racial and ethnic stereotypes in the medium of mainstream comics.

Throughout history, comics have reflected the sociopolitical attitudes of their writers and readers. In America, early comics consisted primarily of short, humorous comic strips printed in newspapers. In the 1930s, comics evolved into longer, action-oriented storylines and transitioned into the comic medium format. It began addressing important contemporary political issues. For example, some have suggested that the Wonder Woman character and title evolved as a vehicle to communicate pro-American attitudes during World War II.X-Men creator, Stan Lee has frequently cited the Civil Rights Movement as the inspiration for his mutant team of superheroes, and has translated many of the tensions of majority-minority race politics into the X-Men title.

Nonetheless, for many years, comic book characters noticeably lacked racial and ethnic diversity. Comics writer and artist Kevin Sutherland said "...when you look at the shelves and see half the titles on sale are characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man - dammit, these characters weren't even allowed to be Jewish like their creators, let alone be black." Recognizing the influence of comics on popular culture, some members of ethnic and racial communities have focused their attention on stereotypes within comics, and have begun lobbying to change them. This is accomplished in many ways, frequently by either writing new character of color or "trans-racializing" existing characters from Whites to racial or ethnic minorities (e.g. the changing of Karate Kid's race from White to Asian).

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