Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #44: Isaiah Bradley

Diversity in long-standing superhero comics is hard work.  Most of the classic superheroes were white men because they were largely created by white men.  There were a handful of white women in the mix, but minority representation among superheroes has often been rough if not outright painful in the way some creators set about creating a hero of color.

Sometimes the answer is to create a new version of the hero in question, a legacy character, that can be of another race and hope it goes over well.  That can lead to successful characters, like Green Lantern John Stewart, or less successful ones, like the Marvel hero Battlestar, a black man set as a partner to U.S.Agent, himself a onetime Captain America.  Battlestar initially went by the codename “Bucky” until someone realized that was actually a rather racist name and changed it to Battlestar.

But then there’s the curious case of Isaiah Bradley.