KKKomic Book Heroes

Spoilers follow for The American Way

Some time back, MacQ did a post on The American Way. I picked up a copy of the trade a couple of weeks ago, and enjoyed it for the most part. My biggest gripe, I suppose, was having the whole story fall into an old North vs. South dynamic.

And one aspect of that rubbed me wrong enough to want to share. That would be this guy (the one on the left):



His hero name is Southern Cross. His power is, obviously, very much like the Human Torch's. And in the latter half of the book, he turns out to be a really big racist. As in, very-eager-to-go-lynching racist.

And his logo, naturally, is a cross. Specifically, a slight variation on this cross,



which is the symbol of the Ku Klux Klan.

So...no. I can't believe that the U.S. government would take a virulent racist with pyrokinetic powers, name him something that (with those powers) hints at cross-burnings, and stick him in a white costume with a KKK logo. And this is, of course, assuming that the feds didn't themselves give the racist guy fire powers to start with.

I can handle the flying, flaming man angle. But not the idea that the feds would be so remarkably stupid as to put together a KKK-themed superhero during the Civil Rights era. George Wallace, maybe. On a particularly evil day. But the Kennedy administration? No way.