Written by John Ridley
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli
and Andrea Cucchi
Published by DC Comics
I won’t lie. The Other History of the DC Universe #2 was tough to read.
Not because of its quality, which is tremendous as expected from a John Ridley work.
In this memoir of Mal Duncan and Karen Beecher-Duncan’s time with the Teen Titans, I saw so much of my own life story.
Not that I ever was a costumed crimefighter in a supergroup.
But I had more than my share of operating as the one (or one of a few) Black person in an elite, white environment. That regardless of the exceptional and extraordinary achievements and circumstances that brought me to such a hallowed space, I was an outsider, and that reality would never go away.
However, that’s not all. The experience in that environment – high school, college, past workplaces – still brought much pride and growth. I forged myself in those spaces, learned so much and grew into my own power.
Mal and Karen detail those insider/outsider dynamics, and their effects on their hearts and souls, in Ridley’s masterfully told story. Mal and Karen tell their sides of being in the Teen Titans with distinct, realistic voices that sound like they’re sitting right in front of you.
These retired heroes sound a bit older, a bit bruised, but ultimately proud of what they did, and quite proud of what they chose to become.
Their story paints a picture of achievement mixed with resentment, of sadness and hard feelings in the shadows of genuine joys.
How else are you supposed to feel when Karen tells the story of attending Wonder Girl’s wedding? She says how happy she was at Wonder Girl’s wedding, with all the Titans and heroes there, but none of them came to her and Mal’s wedding.
How else are you supposed to feel when, in Mal’s case, you’re invited to join the Teen Titans, and they slot you into a maintenance man role?
Mind you, this take on the character still showed up on Young Justice. It goes that deep.
In the mid-1970s, a fiery age of affirmative action, Mal was lifted up from the Metropolis slum Hell’s Corner, a high-achieving student and athlete, and joined the Teen Titans, a supergroup of sidekicks and proteges of Justice League-level superheroes.
In other words, Mal’s a ghetto kid with promise who’s now in a club of legacies. And, like many legacies, they’re skewed by their privilege by mentors and parental figures who left them woefully underprepared for the real world while thinking they’re better than you.
How resentful would you be as Mel if Speedy, deep in his drug addiction, called you a second-rate hero who didn’t belong there?
I remember the time a legacy classmate in my all-boys private prep school called me an affirmative action case, as if to say I was there only because I was Black, when I was an A student and he was pulling C’s.
So, yeah, this one got to me.
Even Karen became Bumblebee out of a righteous anger to prove to Mal how much the Titans disregarded his presence. And that personal disregard is a micro-level manifestation of the large scale disregard Black people are afforded in white society.
Ridley makes that clear in how Karen tells the Atlanta child murders of 1978-81.
Because Ridley places superheroes in our real world and its events, he takes superheroes to the limits of the medium. Superheroes will rush toward a multidimensional crisis, or to foil a supervillain’s scheme for conquest and ill-gotten riches. But what can they do against the interlocking social ills that mercilessly, unjustly snatch up countless Black lives?
Ridley then ties that kind of unfathomable evil and death back into the comic book world as Karen tells her point of view regarding the Crisis on Infinite Earths and the death of Supergirl. You see her rail against the chauvinism and sexism around how Supergirl was sheltered and then shown off like a debutante. Then Karen empathizes with Superman’s own outsider status and deep legacy of loss as the last son of a dead world.
In this story, Mal and Karen weigh individual gains against collective progress. That the win of one means the progress of all. Even when it still hurts when you yourself miss the chance to be the breakthrough. Mal never got to be the first Black leader of the Titans, but there was pride when Cyborg got the nod from Robin.
On the eve of Black History Month, it’s worth remembering that for every historic first celebrated, it’s not because of ability that they became the first. Others had the talent and merit. They weren’t allowed to arrive.
But in this story, we see Mal and Karen work through the imposter feelings and come out the other side counting up the wins they did get, the shortcomings they do own, and the arrival at knowing what was enough for them.
