Today we delve into the history of another forgotten superhero, though unlike our previous characters of discussion, this one is more recent. Another difference from previous posts is that this character is not from an American publisher, but a South African one. Prepare for a wild ride folks, because we're looking into the history of Mighty Man: The Forgotten South African Propaganda Superhero.
| Cover of Afri-Comics #1. Source: UCLA Library, International Digital Ephemera Project. http://idep.library.ucla.edu/search#!/document/africanephemera:20 |
Before we begin, I want to mention that this series was inspired by Mr. Rogues, who does videos on superheroes and super villains. You can find one of his videos here.
General Info/Origin Story
Mighty Man's alias is Danny Ndhlomo, who lives in Soweto, South Africa. In Afri-Comics #1, published by.... we'll get to that later (believe me, the history behind this comic deserves a section to itself) we learn that Danny is a Cop. He's injured in the line of duty and shot. Thankfully, Danny survives, but the doctor (a white doctor I should mention, keep that in mind, it will become important later) cannot remove the bullet, because it landed too close to Danny's heart.
Still wanting to help the public, Danny re-enlists and is transferred to the records department, where he meets Donna Buthelezi, his boss and love interest.
Danny and Donna get along well, which helps. Donna's brother is kidnapped, and she's blackmailed by a local gang to steal police files on the gang. Danny catches her leaving with the files, but takes the blame, and goes on the run. He climbs onto a truck, which he falls off of in the jungle. As it goes during superhero origins, things go from bad to worse.
It begins raining, and Danny's heart begins to give out. The universe, deciding to give Danny a hand, shoots down a lightning bolt and opens a path to an underground cavern system. Danny crawls in for shelter, but the pain returns when he tries to get a drink of water, and falls in.
Then... underground aliens find him? It's-really hard to explain, so I'll just let you read it and see for yourself.
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| You REALLY can't make some of this shit up, can you? Image Credit: Afri Comics No. 1, UCLA Library. https://idep.library.ucla.edu/search#!/document/africanephemera:20 |
The underground aliens heal Danny, removing the bullet and give him powers. Returning with a costume the underground aliens give him, Danny swears to use his powers for good. Thus, Mighty Man is born.
All things considered, I think Mighty Man has an all right costume. The mask is slightly weird, but the color balance is pretty good. It might seem similar to another, more popular American superhero. That's right, Mighty Man is a rip off of... Superman.
Big surprise am I right?
The costume is nearly identically, color wise, except the M is moved to above the belt, with some yellow lining added for good measure, and of course the addition of the mask. However, there is one big difference between Superman and Mighty Man.
Superman has a history of fighting against discrimination, that's what he stands for. Most famously, he fought the KKK in a 1950's Radio Show, which was retold in a recent comic run "Superman Smashes the Klan," (I won't go into too much detail on that here, as that's a blog post for another day).
Mighty Man, on the other hand, was a propaganda weapon who NEVER addressed the issues in South Africa at the time, in particular the Racism of the Apartheid Regime. Let me explain.
Real Life Background
So who published Mighty Man and Afri-Comics? The South African Apartheid Government.... kinda. You see, according to an article by Business Insider South Africa, the Apartheid Government were trying to find new forms of propaganda to counteract Communism, and Anti-Racism, while trying to make themselves look like the source of Law and Order. AND, encouraging Law and Order by telling people to not not question the system in place.
Though one quote claims the comics were to "help educate the black man in the ways of Western society, social concerns and free enterprise,” according to John McGoff, an American collaborator on the project, we all know. We all know.
That's right, Americans also helped with this. Afri Comics were made in New York by Manville Inc., a market research company which did an analysis of what the Apartheid's government in 1973 was to the rest of the World. The man who oversaw the comics was Eschel Roodie, the Secretary of the Department of Information. Jan van Zyl Alberts, a South African businessman, was the front man of the business.
Now if you're like me, you might know much about South African Apartheid. (We learned it in high school, but it wasn't very in depth). Let's backtrack a little. In 1948, according to History.com, the National Party began Apartheid, essentially the South African equivalent of Jim Crow. (Even to the point where, on the History.com website, there's a photo of a sign that reads "Caution: Beware of Natives.)
Indigenous Africans were forced to live in separate areas from their White Overlords, and contact was made as limited as possible. Which's why there's so few white people in the Mighty Man comics.
Interracial marriage was outlawed in 1950, and that was with 4 groups: Bantu (Black Africans), "Colored" (their language choice, not mine, biracial), white, and Asian (people from India or Pakistan). 80% of the land was set aside for the White Supremacists, and non-whites were forced to have passes to go into the "restricted" areas. The term used was "Separate Development," aka "Separate But Equal," aka "We're racist and we don't want to interact with you."
Now that we have that context, let's return to Mighty Man
Backlash/Death of Mighty Man
17 issues of Afri Comics were produced, and 470,000 copies were made from 1975-77. Now, Afri-Comics failed as propoganda. Why? Because people were not fooled by it!
The worst example of the racism is in the roles people play in the comics. For example, white people are never portrayed as the villains in any of the stories. Also, the doctor who heals Mighty Man is white, while the nurses are all black. There's a lot of coded racism that's trying to subconsciously tell people what they can and can't do. Thankfully, the young people of Soweto saw right though it.
In 1976, Soweto students burned Afri Comics in protest of the Apartheid Regime, during the Soweto Uprising (You can read about that here). The University of California Los Angeles, who have preserved the comics, go into more detail on their website. During the uprising, students burned newsstands and threw the comics onto the ground, which caused the US Publishers to back out.
What was "worse" for the Regime, the amount of money they were spending (secretly) on the comics were revealed by the Rand Daily Mail, a South African newspaper, during what was called the "Information Scandal." Eschel Roodie, according to the ACLU website, had to leave South Africa after being charged with misappropriating funds, (even though they told him to go ahead), he escaped to the US where he stayed until he died in 1993.
The Apartheid Regime spent R64 Million (In US Currency today is around $4,133,969.92). That's a lot of money to spend on a comic that doesn't do it's job. With their propaganda exposed, the Apartheid Regime ended Afri Comics, and Mighty Man fell into obscurity.
If it were not for the UCLA Library, Mighty Man might've been lost to our general knowledge. Thankfully, Professor William H. Worger had collected all of the comics, and they were digitally scanned. So now you can read the comics for free, and the history of the lesser known propaganda has been preserved.
Which is thankful, because so few copies exist. This' likely due to the Soweto Uprising and the negative reputation the character had.
And before I finish up with my personal thoughts, a quick fun fact:
The Apartheid Regime gained the idea for making a comic... from the CIA. According to the ACLU Website, according to a quote from Jan van Zyl Alberts, who had friends in the CIA.
If I Rewrote Mighty Man...
So here's a little fun, for these history posts I'm going to do a segment called "If I Rewrote," where I'll give ideas for how to improve on what came before.
Which's ironic, because I wouldn't rewrite this character. I considered it (genuinely, I should say) and I had a discussion with a fellow comic fan over whether or not you could use Mighty Man. My friend said no, because of the history. I argued that you could make the character stand for something new.
And maybe you could. However, I don't think I'm the person for the job, as a white guy and someone who knows nothing about South Africa, this' a character that is best left in the past, as a historical example of what not to do.
And honestly, I do not think the world needs a re-imagined Mighty Man. We have good African Superheroes such as Storm, Black Panther, and Shuri, and African-American superheroes such as Ri Ri Williams (aka Iron Heart), Falcon, War Machine and who could forget Miles Morales Spider-Man?
All right, so I can actually set a tone for this mini-series,
If I Rewrote Mighty Man, I would make him tackle South African Apartheid, and have the Apartheid Regime freak out when he goes public. Which makes sense, and they WOULD freak out if a super powered African came into existence.
The Apartheid Regime would probably hunt down Mighty Man, making him loose his faith in the Police Force, and I could see him joining the Soweto Uprising.
In any case, we're not likely to see Mighty Man re-imagined anytime soon, which I think is fine. The legacy of the character's Apartheid Creation would always haunt any new version.
If you want to read a perspective of someone who lived in South Africa at the time, I ran across this blog, but didn't feel a need to cite it, but still want to give it a shout out. You can find it here.
So what do you think of Mighty Man? If you were to try and tackle remaking Mighty Man, what would you do? Let me know in the comments below, or my Facebook page for the blog, @TugTramBlogging. Thanks for reading, and I'll See You on the Tramway!
Sources:
"Afri Comics." UCLA Library, International Digital Epherma Project.
http://idep.library.ucla.edu/search#!/collection=Afri-comics
"Apartheid." History.com. www.history.com/topics/africa/apartheid
"Information Scandal." SAHistory.org. www.sahistory.org.za/article/information-scandal
Villiers, James de. "The apartheid government created a black superhero called Mighty Man – and in 1976, black youth set him on fire."
www.businessinsider.co.za/apartheid-government-spent-millions-educate-black-man-comic-youth-day-2018-6
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