All in All

One of the big things that DC Comics seems to be promoting at the moment is more diversity, bringing minorities to the fore. This is especially seen most recently with the arrival of a lesbian Batwoman, and the replacement of two established Caucasian heroes (Firestorm and the Atom) with respectively a young African-American male and a East Asian male. Reader response has been mixed.

But this is not the first time DC has tried this and whatever happens to their sales, they can be relieved to know that this attempt at diversity will never be as bad as their last one: The New Guardians.

The premise was that the guardians of the universe were to select 12 people to become the next generation of immortal guardians. DC's intention being that not all heroes come from the US. Who were selected? A Chairman Mao stereotype Chinese woman, a Japanese businessman, a South African white supremecist, an aborigine, a screamingly gay Peruvian, a next-gen post-Windrush British Jamaican, a plant-based former villain, an Inuit side-kick and a not-used anymore hero. Obviously the South African was kicked out of the group to become their main foe, genetically engineering a vampire called the Haemo-goblin (I kid you not) infected with the Aids virus to attack them.

Powered up, the team were awful stereotypes. The Japanese businessman became a living computer called Ram (as in Random Access Memory, because the Japanese are at the forfront of IT development). He's dead now. The chinese girl went from pudding bowl haircut and cliched chinese suit, to a vixen with hair down to her knees and a costume exposing cleavage right down to below her belly button, to show how now she is liberated. She's called Gloss for some reason and is still alive in a slightly better costume. The Jamaican spoke the worst patois ever ("I-n-I tink dis") and wore a costume that was little more than a bikini. She was bitten by the Haemo-goblin and died of Aids a couple of months later (yes, Aids can spread and kill that instantly!). The aborigine became part of the aboriginal Dreamtime and appeared in dreams, controlling dreams. The worst was the gay man. The called him Extrano, which is Spanish for strange, or odd, or possibly queer. He was camper than Larry Grayson on a bad day. He was scratched by the Haemo-goblin and was diagnosed with HIV. This incensed many gay readers at the time. I even wrote a letter (it was published, but thankfully anticipating a later wave of embarrassment at the idea of writing a letter to a comic, I wrote under a pseudonym so no-one will ever know), saying that it has never been shown that HIV can be transmitted through fingernails. They said that all will be explained about his HIV. They did a scene of him in a graveyard in his hometown where he looked at the graves and muttered "Ramon, Paco, Juan, how many of you have I lost to this vile scourge". Yes, their answer was that well, he's a gay man, of course he has HIV. This should be coupled with his first appearance where he was about to commit suicide as he was so unhappy with being gay - great depiction of your average gay male there. He may still be alive in comic terms but let's hope we never see him again.

The New Guardians lasted 12 issues. Sadly I still have all of them. This was a bad moment for DC Comics, I hope that the diversity of 2007 is better executed.