Y’all, I wanted to talk about O’Neil taking on toxic masculinity and the obsession with “honor” in the army, the way our our government failed the soldiers who were forced to fight in the Vietnam War, the way our society failed, and still fails, to take PTSD seriously or to have services to actually help with mental health, how patriotism is weaponized, and how sexism informs our entire political system but then “The Question” #15 overshadowed all the rest. What could’ve done that?
Well, let me put it this way. “The Question” #14 has an anti-Vietnamese slur thrown out in a panel and I totally forgot about that.
Spoilers ahead
Cover by Denys Cowan
and Bill SienkiewiczWritten by Denny O’Neil
Pencilled by Denys Cowan
Inked by Rick Magyar
Colored by Tatjana Wood
Lettered by Steve Haynie“BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE…” The Question is on the trail of a group of paramilitary fanatics, but will he be any match for their great numbers?
Issue #15 is going to be a hard one to read for anyone working their way through this run of “The Question” and, I for one, struggled with thinking of how best to talk about it. It’s a product of its time and place, is an effective issue and a wonderful example against the moronic argument that comics in the “good old days” didn’t tackle topical socio-political topics. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight and thirty-or-so years of critical thought with regards to framing in art, specifically with an eye for the treatment of this issue, I find it tricky to assess whether or not it succeeds nowadays, or if the attempts to be blunt with the harshness of the world does not hold up and reads as misguided.
Let me stop beating around the bush.
“The Question” #15 deals explicitly with a series of lynchings in Hub City and every other page features slime-ball PI Loomis McCarthy (a name that conjures up only positive thoughts, yes?) making some racist joke, jab or comment or straight up dropping the n-word. The opening page is a splash page, with PI Douchcanoe front and center, with the issue’s title ‘Epitaph for a Hero’ next to him. On the next page is a vertical panel, taking up about half the page, is Andrew Cale’s lynched body. You can see how this is an uncomfortable issue.
However, the presentation and framing is clear in condemning the actions and words of McCarthy, and I particularly love the way “The Question” #15 doesn’t paper over the reality of how racism and white privilege played out in the 80s (only marginally different from the 90s, and the 2000s, and the 2010s, and the. . .) but the dated nature of its approach opens the door for critique of its handling of the issue.
There is a line of critique with regards to the potentially lurid nature of a full presentation of a lynched body, and the lack of any black characters in POV positions, save for the policeman, Lou, who decks PI Dickhead in a glorious set of panels. I don’t think they hold up with respect to this issue, though the latter is a larger critique of comics and art in America in general and, in the regards, is 100% valid. The former, however, is mitigated by the framing as created by the colors rather than the line-art/paneling.
It is markedly different from the rest of the page, refusing to present Cale’s body in a voyeuristic light, denying the reader the clarity of colors or the details that light brings. It is meant to have impact and to contrast PI Fuckbag’s laize-faire attitude with the seriousness of the crime. To not show the body is to diminish the impact but to show too much is to take pleasure in viewing the atrocity. Moreover, this is the only panel we get and later, when recounting the other victims, we are shown not their deaths, but their lives as well as their professions and names.
In my undergraduate studies, I read the book “Go Tell it On the Mountain” by James Baldwin. At one point, I was asked to read aloud from a passage for the class to discuss and, after mechanically beginning to read, was stopped and my professor, who is African-American, told me to replace any instance of the n-word with the letter “n.” He had forgotten to tell us and I had failed to think critically about a white guy saying aloud the n-word, regardless of the context of the word in the art. I bring this up because I believe there is a place for difficult words in art and that, especially when dealing with historical art wherein the usage was meant to be reflective of the era, we should not paper over that.
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But I also know that regurgitating words with power without thought or consideration often does more harm than good. That looking for an excuse to use those words as someone who is not of the affected group is not an ethical approach to art. Denny O’Neil was a white guy from Missouri and so him putting the copious amounts of slurs into this issue, no matter how framed as a negative they were nor how central to the theme of the issue they are, creates an air of tension about the issue that needs to be considered.
A question to ask would be: at the time, were these topics broached? Was what O’Neil did important because, for its time, it brought to bear complicity of the white characters’ silence (especially the white cop holding Lou back,) addressed the continued racism of the era that was not the exclusive purview of the stereotypical white Middle American/Southerner (McCarthy says he’s “from up North”) and confronted readers with the ugliness of that racism as well as how quick we are to label them heroes because of one, “selfless” action? Perhaps.
O’Neil’s heart seemed to be in the right place and, again, this issue may have been very progressive for its time. I would imagine (and hope) that Denys Cowan, one of the few African-Americans working at DC at the time, gave notes to O’Neil on how to broach the topic without regurgitating stereotypes and problematic framing, and that O’Neil listened.
In 2020, however, the overuse of the n-word feels gratuitous — purposefully so, but still gratuitous. While I believe the merits of the story itself and the turning of the “noble sacrifice” on its head is worth the read, this may be one issue modern readers will want to approach with more prior knowledge or jump over altogether.
To close us out, let’s see that panel of Lou punching McCarthy again.
Until next time, keep punching Klansmen and Nazis (I know I repeat myself but…).
