Mansion Minutes #2: Mean Green and Race Cards

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST IS PRETTY FUCKING LONG. AFTER THE UNT PART IT TALKS ABOUT RACE IN MY PAST COMIC ENDEAVORS! SO YEAH.

Okay first thing is first. UNT beat Florida Atlantic. We're in a fucking logjam for second place in the Sun Belt conference and we really fucked ourselves by getting swept by Arkansas State and I know that will hurt us come tourney time. The top three teams get bye and right now that's Middle Tennesee, Arkansas State and Florida Atlantic. Bad news we lost to MidTenn and ASU. Good news, UNT is currently the sixth seed meaning 1) we host the first round game at the Super Pit in Denton 2) We would play the 11th place team round one which right now is the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks who we drubbed earlier this season and 3) The winner of the 6-11 game plays the third seed which is FAU who we just slaughtered. So first two rounds? Not worried. Am I concerned we'll lose in the Conference Championship game again? Eh. A little.

Okay on two thing number two and it's something that is a little more...eh, risque? I am of course talking about the race card. Now if you read this for God's sake please read the whole thing and try not to get to up in arms. I'm just noticing something okay.

Okay, lemme lay it out there. I'm black. No. The little characters I drew to represent me in this last two journals aren't some kind of silly avatar. That's me. I wear glasses, I always wear that hat I wear the Fry-style-black-long-sleeve-over-other-shirt thing frequent, I have three stupid chin hairs and can't grow a damn thing more to save my life and well you get the idea. Now this in the past has shocked people who don't know me as Eric Merritt: North Texas Sophomore but know me as Eric Merritt: Webcomic Artist. Why? Well as a friend of mine pointed out during my Super Drama run my main characters tend to be white. In fact I went through EVERY comic series I've ever drawn. You can't count the number of African-American, Black (or as controversially placed on the Census) Negro, characters ON ONE HAND.

Lexington Houston of Soul Siphon. The main character of Assassins Anonymous (forgot his name) Zachary Powell from the Super Drama series and of course, Regent Royals from Singularity. Now of those, only two were main characters. The other characters? White with the exception of Toshi in Coming Soon who was (admittedly) a trope heavy Asian. (Not to the point of racism but to the point where he wasn't an interesting/believable character) and I guess technically Roulette counts as Myanmar but he's a red panda so eh? Other than that. Overwhelmingly white. For people piece this together, that's right. MIDNIGHT MASTER IS NOT BLACK. I have no idea what the fuck Lysander is to be honest. This bothered my dad a little when I first started out as he asked me "Where are all the brothers?" Now this was during the Coming Soon era, which was the two guys on a couch story but a little dumber I blatantly told my dad I didn't want to write dumb black characters. But it made it okay to write a dumb white guy and a trope heavy Asian? Techincally the answer is no, it's not okay but it gets done and whether it's right or wrong or what's the line is something Family Guy challenges with every episode. Not my battle. Not my point. But it got me thinking about two things.

1) Why didn't I write black characters?
2) Why should I be pressured to write black characters?

Yes this is a LONG post. Sorry.

Okay question 1: Why didn't I write black characters. Well I guess it was my perception of people in general back then as far as the media goes. Okay. Let's not bullshit here: I was pretty atypical of the African-American/Black guys I knew in high school when I started drawing. I was a member of the debate team, I held proper usage of the English language in highest of regards, dancing and rapping were not my forte, I was not very athletic and I was a huge fucking Mario/Sonic/Pokemon nerd. Should any of that mattered? Eh maybe. Maybe not BUT what it did do was create a disconnect between me and black folk at Bowman/Williams/Plano East (middle/9-10/11-12 schools respectively).

I was labeled nerdy and (what pissed me off the most to be called) white. Not that I have anything against white people but to be disowned by my race (or a select few of them in school) because I wasn't a fucking stereotype was annoying. So I felt that I knew more about the nerdy kind of guy or that person so I could write that better. Case in point, my first comic File Not Found--gaming comic. Cast? All white. Why? I didn't know any brothers at, I think I was at Williams when I did FNF, who sat around playing RPGs or anything like that. They were, for the most part-not all but mostly, trying to be ghetto in Plano.

Okay pause. For those of you who don't know my hometown is Plano, Texas. The median income of Plano is alomst $85,000. Ghetto we ain't. We were ranked the wealthiest suburb with more than a quarter million residents in the FUCKING USA in 2008 for fuck's sake. Not the DFW area. Not the state of Texas. THE ENTIRE FUCKING NATION. Now I will temper this and say the city is broken down East, Central and West and the West families make on average $100k or so and the East families average around 65k-70k with Central making up the middle group. But yeah, side note over. The point is I understood 1) I wasn't poor 2) It was fucking ridiculous to act like I was from a poor place 3) The majority of the black males at East acted in such a manner so I didn't associate with them. That simple.

Now this created a bit of a Uncle Ruckus side of me where I didn't like black folk acting ghetto in THE FUCKING RICHEST SUBURB IN THE NATION. But that's what was there so I stayed away from alot of African American influenced things. BET? Hip-hop and R&B? Soul Plane? To this day I don't listen to any music that was created after I was born. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five? Yes. Michael Jackson? Yes. Stevie Wonder? Yes. Earth Wind and Fire? HELL FUCKING YES.

Who the fuck is Nelly? Lil Bow Wow? Lil Wayne? My parents called me Lil 'E (I'm a junior you see) and I fucking hated it. Who the fuck wants to be little anything? Against rambling. There was a disconnect. I didn't feel I could relate to black people therefore I wouldn't be able to write a compelling black character and so I didn't even try. White characters in comics are allowed to run the gamut to be whatever. A black character like me? Didn't make sense to me at the time. No one would read it. No one would find it believeable. So they weren't black. I don't know shit about Russian culture. A Russian character would end up like Toshi did, trope heavy because that's all I would be able to run on.

When I did start debuting black characters with Zach in Super Drama (AA didn't get much attention. Neither did Soul Siphon) people automatically assumed Zach was my Author Avatar.

Me: Why?
People: Well he's the only black guy.

Okay. You are partially right. Zach was me. But so was EVERYONE that wasn't Victoria in Super Drama. Leo was my rational desire to be normal. Zach are was my happy-let's-have-fun side. Nick was my hopeless romantic (who unlike me gets the girl) and Dexter was the side of me that can be a be of a prick, arrogant snob and really only gives a damn about (my/him)self. Roulette was my fascination with things just being odd and really out of place. So he was my love for comedy which made since why he was Zach's pet.

But that leads me to my second question: Should I be pressured into making black characters? The majority of comic book artists and characters are white. Spiderman. Stan Lee. Jack Kirby The Incredible Hulk. Batman. Whoever the fuck draws DC Comics (I'm a Marvel Guy). White. There are only two black comic artists I can think of off the top of my head: Ray Billingsley and Arron McGruder. Their two comics are Curtis and The Boondocks respectively. Their cast? Predominantly black. So when I tell you, at times I feel there is a slight pressure to have more black characters, don't say "Oh that's only something white comic artists worry about" because that's bullshit. But I mean should I just create black characters to create them?

The answer of course is no. Brigadier Battery, while he takes elements from the mannerisms of my great grandmother and grandfather, I made him white. Why? Because that's how I view him. When the concept of Brigadier first came to mind he was white. I couldn't have made him black/Asian/Canadian if I wanted to. The same goes with Regent. Since the Fallout days, that character was going to be black. Was he going to be some hip hop singing, troped out, pants sagging athlete? No. Was he going to be a revolutionary Black Panther, Black Power character? No. But he was going to be black? Yeah. What kind of black guy. I dunno. Normal?

It's the same fucking thing we hear in the media all the time about stereotypes and blah blah blah. Black characters by in large tend to play out some sort of role. They're the Revolutionist (Huey Freeman), they're the gangster (holy shit not enough space, but Riley Freeman for brevity), they're the man that left his wife for a sexier younger woman (Pick a Tyler Perry movie and blindfold yourself. Throw a dart. You found him). What about me? I'm just a guy who happens to be black. That's what Regent is. Yes he's an athlete (not very good one but he made the team. Oh by the way spoilers). He plays videogames. He's just a college student. Like I've said before to people asking me about the comic or my little brother: Regent Royals is basically me in the situations he's in. There's a little attitude variances (at times we're a little more confident than the other. He's a little more business minded than I am and he has a beard the lucky bastard) but that's that him being black is just a part of him and really shouldn't be a point one way or another.

But it is

WHY? I dunno. I guess the question I was answering was why are the majority of the character you create white. The answer is just because they are. I don't have a fucking chart and said oh shit this guy needs to be white or this guy needs to be old. Now yes, my main characters across the board are males around my age. Because that's what I know. I couldn't write a female lead because that's not my experience. I wouldn't grab female readers because she'd just come off as artificial. All I can promise with Iris is that she's not fanservice (sorry guys). But is she secretly the star of the show. No, she is a self-describe talent scout. Is that the depth to her character? Eh, more or less. Is her character that (shallow/deep) because I can't write women? No it's more because of what her role in the comic is. She is a talent scout and an agent. Her job is business. Don't expect her to be this motherly person. She is about the business of staying in business. That's what she does. Lysander is a politician. He cares about his constituents but knows he can't serve them unless he gets reelected. So best believe he's going to do what will get him reelected. Brigadier is an old man who all he knows is being a hero. Why is he a hero? You'll find out later. But that's his motivation to help people. And Regent is a college student. He's about graduating, making money and having a good time all the while. Boom. That's it. The races and genders aren't what makes them that. They made themselves that. You hear writers say it all the time "I didn't write the story, the story told itself to me"

Guys I won't lie: there really is not much of Singularity written down in pen on paper. An INCREDIBLE amount of this story is made up on the fly. Big example you've already seen: Midnight Master wasn't going to be a supervillian. He was just going to be an ordinary thug. But suddenly my mind said, "No this story's going a different direction." I don't control this shit. It happens. My mind turns on with a character or plot device or whatever. I write it down so I don't forget and go from there. Do I have chapter two written out? I have major plot points in my head and I think and outline somewhere with my stuff from last semester but storyboards? Nope. I storyboard about a week in advance. Yeah, very rarely do I have an iron-clad storyboard drawn for a comic more than two to three days in advanced. Fact.

So long story short, the character are whatever they are because they couldn't be anything else. And well fuck if you read the whole damn thing you're pretty fucking awesome.

Now I need to go draw tonight's Singularity.

UNT, Until Next Time
Eric W. Merritt