Mixed identities and superheroes

But by the Golden Age of Comic Books, readers were being introduced to characters whose dual identities weren’t distinguished by a pair of glasses, but rather their mixed ethnicity heritage. 

Namor the Sub-Mariner was the first Marvel Comics superhero, conceived by writer-artist Bill Everett in 1939 as the mutant son of Princess Fen of Atlantis and human sea captain Leonard McKenzie. Despite Atlanteans being blue-skinned and his father being a white American, Everett chose to draw Namor with stereotypical East Asian features to separate him further from “the white man” he sought to protect his people from.

But the leader of Atlantis has faced racism and racial slurs under the sea as well as on dry land. “I am the son of both land and sea,” Namor says to T’Challa in Rise of the Black Panther #2 (2018). “He [Atlantean scientist Meranno] mocks the colour of my skin and says Atlantis shouldn’t have a half-breed freak on the throne.”

It’s no wonder then that he is characterised as being so quick to temper and full of angst in his search for identity and place, which means he frequently tows the line between heroism and villainy. Although, ultimately, it’s because of his mixed heritage that peace can sometimes be brokered between sea and surface dwellers – even if he’s othered in the process.

That’s the message in James Wan’s 2018 Aquaman movie. The DC Comics’ imitation of Namor, created by Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris in 1941, was given a mixed ethnicity identity after his backstory was retconned in 1959 to make him part human, part royal Atlantean too. However, the film adaptation, with Jason Momoa playing the eponymous hero, would better visualise and interrogate this biracial tension. Arthur Curry of the page is depicted as blue-eyed and blond-haired, but by casting Momoa, and Temuera Morrison as Arthur’s lighthouse keeper father, his human racial identity is Polynesian, while the Atlanteans – the royal family at least – fit more with the Aryan ideal.

That supremacist attitude is felt throughout, with Arthur being referred to as a half-breed and his half-brother Orm, played by Patrick Wilson, declaring his shame that their mother would “defile herself with a surface dweller”. Unlike Namor, Arthur has felt more at home on land because of his mother Atlanna’s abandonment combined with the racism from Atlantis. But he inevitably embraces both sides of his heritage in order to save the day. “My father was a lighthouse keeper, my mother was a queen,” says Aquaman. “They were never meant to meet, but their love saved the world. They made me what I am. A son of the land. A king of the seas.”

It’s a common trope for superheroes of mixed heritage to be pulled between two warring races, but especially dramatic when one is kept in the dark of their origins. For many years, Hulkling of the Marvel comics was unaware that he was the son of Pink Kree Mar-Vell and Skrull princess Annelle, but, subsequently, attempts had been made by both sides to make him a pawn in the long-running Kree-Skrull war.

Meanwhile, Loki of the MCU believed he was the biological child of Asgardian king Odin and queen Frigga until he discovered he was instead the unwanted son of Laufey, the enemy king of the Frost Giants. Loki has always felt inferior to his brother Thor, and this new knowledge only exacerbated his sense of being an outsider. But his need for his father’s and Asgard’s acceptance, as well as to fulfil a “glorious purpose”, manifests in villainous ways, as with his attempt to destroy the Frost Giant’s homeworld of Jotunheim and sever his connection to them, in Thor (2011). “I could have done it, father!” Loki tells Odin. “For you!” 

Had his adoptive parents been honest about his heritage, instead of making him unknowingly assimilate completely into Asgardian culture, the trickster god might well have embraced both sides of himself rather than channel those isolating feelings towards catastrophic ends.

In Avengers Assemble (2012), Loki unsuccessfully tries to conquer Earth, and in Thor: The Dark World (2013) his duplicity leads to Frigga’s death. It’s only after losing his adoptive mother that Loki begins to accept his mixed heritage. That’s when he stops taking his resentment out on the universe and starts trying to save it.

In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), he declares that he is “not Asgardian” but is “prince of Asgard, Odinson” and “the rightful king of the Jotunheim,” thereby accepting all of himself in his final heroic moment. The Loki series will provide even more space to explore his identity, but he, Hulkling and comic book Arthur Curry are still white men whose characterisation is indicative of the hackneyed comic book ploy of using fictional races as a metaphor for real-world prejudices while still pandering to white male audiences. 

More recently, comic book writers have created heroes that better reflect the multiculturalism of the cities they inhabit, where their mixed heritage isn’t wrapped up in tribalistic conflict. Peter Parker is a kid from Brooklyn in a low-income household who lives with his aunt. There’s nothing inherently white about his lifestyle, so having Miles Morales, the son of an African-American father and Puerto Rican mother, take up the Spider-Man mantle was an easy enough transition.

Prior to his arrival came Colleen Wing: a half Chinese, half Japanese, American private detective trained in the way of the samurai by her grandfather Kenji Ozawa. She takes great pride in her heritage, and it’s an integral part of her superheroism, but she’s not a model minority. Just like Ms Marvel…

Created by G. Willow Wilson and Sana Amanat, Kamala Khan is the Muslim-American teenage daughter of Pakistani immigrants from New Jersey. She doesn’t wear a hijab, makes jokes about haram food and is dealing with teen drama and strict parents while finding her place in the world of superheroes. The fact that Kamala, whose Inhuman abilities means she can shapeshift, performs her first heroic act wearing the white face of her favourite hero, Captain Marvel, shows just how often minorities in western countries – women of colour especially – feel the need to assimilate to a white standard. But as she becomes more accepting of herself, Ms Marvel becomes more comfortable having her crime-fighting identity be as brown as her civilian one, who is just as much of an American hero as her namesake. 

“Wait a minute. I have super-powers. I saved somebody’s life on Friday. I am 911! But — everybody’s expecting Ms Marvel, Ms Marvel from the news,” Kamala says in Ms Marvel Vol 1 #3. “With the hair and the spandex and the Avengers swag. Not a sixteen-year-old brown girl with a 9pm curfew. Too late for second thoughts. Don’t worry, Bruno… help is on the way.”

The continued popularity of superhero stories is because underneath their powers are very human experiences, themes and fraught emotions that viewers and readers can relate to. For superheroes of mixed heritage, acceptance is one of the most common concerns that unite their journeys, and it’s an ideal biracial and multicultural audiences can recognise a yearning for – whether it’s acceptance from the differing communities that made us or acceptance in ourselves in spite of prejudice, othering and assimilation. That’s when dual identities of heroes become more than superpowered… that’s when they become empowering.