A Marvel Cartoonist Takes On Racism and Colorism

By Victor Lanada, NewsTaco

A cartoonist named Ronald Wimberly recently composd a wonderful graphic essay about race and colorism for an online magazine called The Nib. The magazine’s tagline “Political cartoons, comics journalism, humor and non-fiction. Words plus pictures” grabbed my attenction at the outset. It seemed to me to be a place where art and politics intersect, and it smartly lets you know how long it’ll take to read a given story – I was hooked.

Wiberly’s essay, titled Lighten Up, is about how an editor at Marvel Comics asked him to lighten the skin tone of a female Afro-Latina character named Melita. A very simple request, except that for Wimberly it smacked of racism – or did it? The question is at the center of his thinking. It’s also at the center of a growing stack of discussions, writing, and arguments that are taking a big chunk of our time.

There are several things that are interesting about this. First, that the cartoon in question exists in an alternate universe with characters of blue and green skin tones; second, that in this universe the characters change over time, so that Melita – according to the editor – had changed form an Afro-Latina to a white Latina (I know, white Latina is itself a charged-up idea, but in the Marvel universe …); and third, after a quick inspection of the magazine’s “about” page I found that The Fix itself has no Latino editors.

It’s a good three minute read that’ll give you a different insight into a growingly common subject in an unconventional format.

Read it HERE.