This post actually started out as a review of the first three collected editions of Marvel Comics' "Ms. Marvel" starring Pakistani-American Kamala Khan, all of which I genuinely enjoyed reading, but as I thought of what to write, I started wondering to myself "why aren't there any Filipino superheroes in the Marvel Universe?"
I then remembered a rather entertaining Iron Man story by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca which was published in 2008, the year Iron Man made his successful big screen debut, which featured not just one but a whole team of Filipino superheroes, the Triumph Division, whose sole apparent purpose was to get blown to smithereens by lackeys of the story arc's villain, Ezekiel Stane, son of the film's villain, Obadiah Stane. While I thank Fraction for the gesture, the characters were ill-conceived and utterly expendable. Much more promising, however, was another Filipino superteam, the Diwata, that was given mention in the same series, but nothing more.
It has been seven years since that story, and yet the Triumph Division remains the only Filipino team of superheroes that a casual Google search turns up.
And yet, there are several superheroes from cultural minorities populating the Marvel Universe. They sure aren't the majority, but there have been more than enough superheroes of African, Chinese, Japanese, Latin American, Pakistani and even Vietnamese descent to show that diversity isn't a completely alien concept to editorial, who have, after all been headed by people of Latin American descent like Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso. As I mentioned, Filipinos got a proper shout-out in the pages of a mainstream Marvel book, only to be completely ignored afterwards.
The fact that Ms. Marvel, of Pakistani descent, gets her very own book and membership in the Avengers, was sort of the straw that broke this camel's back. I'm guessing it helps that one of Marvel's editors nowadays is of Pakistani descent.
I suppose that, key to whether or not a particular character gets further attention, reader response plays some kind of role, and so it disappoints me that, for all of the Filipino comic book geeks here and around the world, there simply wasn't enough of a response to Marvel's attempt to introduce a whole new wave of heroes into one of the most cherished fictional universes in pop culture.
I also find it mildly ironic (and I think this is the proper use of the word) that, even though there have been a slew of very talented Filipino creators, mainly artists, working at Marvel Comics since the 1970s, the creators who actually introduced Filipino superheroes into their pages are an American and a Spaniard. I like to believe that any of the several Filipino creators currently working at Marvel could have some ideas for a character or two they'd like to fight alongside Spider-Man and Iron Man, but for whatever reason, none of them seem to be getting any traction.
Don't get me wrong; I'm only too happy to read the adventures of Filipino superheroes and related characters in our own homegrown comics. I am a regular reader of Trese, and I just gave "Sixty-Six" a rather unorthodox superhero book, a glowing review in this very blog. As someone who grew up with Marvel Comics, though, I really would love to see at least one character of Filipino descent running around that universe, someone who eats things like lechon and adobo and who speaks Tagalog and whose parents pray the rosary. I mean, we Filipinos have given Marvel some of our best talent for at least forty of its seventy years of existence, and I hardly think it'd be too big a bone for them to throw us to give some panel time to our own heroes. Matt Fraction, God bless him and his slipshod research into Filipino culture, at least bothered to try. Maybe it's up to us to really champion the creation of at least one.
I realize this isn't the most pressing concern in the world right now, but when I think about the audience that Ms. Marvel has found, something that would have been unheard of even as recently as ten years ago, I find myself thinking of how a Filipino superhero could be similarly well-received, and considering how well-placed Filipino creators are in the comics and animation industry, I think it's at least worth suggesting.
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