Broken Frontier

The American Way, screenwriter John Ridley’s thought-provoking look at race relations among a group of superheroes in the 1960s, was released earlier this year in collected edition by DC Comics/Wildstorm. Broken Frontier sat down with the author to talk about the story and its themes.

Part One

BROKEN FRONTIER: The comic seems nostalgic and critical of the 60s at the same time.  Was this your intention?

JOHN RIDLEY: Very much so. I think that we look back on that time, particularly the Kennedy era, as Camelot, this wonderful time. That after he was killed, America went downhill. The fact of the matter is that the Kennedy era was not as idyllic as some people recall it to be. The Kennedy administration didn’t at first make a lot of moves in terms of civil rights, they began the expansion of the war in Vietnam, Bobby Kennedy signed the authorization of wiretaps on Martin Luther King, and so forth.

So, with The American Way, I wanted to look back on the era and set the stage. These sorts of things had always been present in America.

People say America lost its innocence. I don’t think that was the case. This was a country built on slavery, on Chinese workers building the railroads, on land stolen from the Native Americans. America was never an innocent country. America lost its ignorance. And I don’t say that like I hate this country, it’s a land of opportunity unparalleled all over the world. But at the same time, you have to be realistic about this country and how it was built and the cost.

BF: Many of the characters pay homage to existing heroes, while others are original. Do they each represent something in the context the era?

JR: Within the era, they were meant to be iconographic, not in a hokey sense but certainly to shorthand some of the storytelling and also to set the characters up as being representational of the best of America. You have Amber Waves and Muscle Shoals and Old Glory and Mighty Delta—these names that, for America, have special meaning. Much like Captain America and what he represents as a strong American hero.

In terms of the archetypes, I definitely wanted to shorthand it so that you know going in without a lot of exposition, this guy is supposed to be the Superman type, she’s the Wonder Woman type, he’s The Flash. When you create a new universe, this way you don’t have to spend two issues making sure readers get the characters. I wanted people to understand these characters immediately so that in a couple issues, I could change them and have these characters grow.

So to have them represent on one level, these icons of America, that fit the story. And on another level, having them represent Superman, Captain Marvel, and so on, that fit the shorthand so that I could get on with the story. We only had eight issues. When you understand that this is Superman and this is Batman and then you see where they go [within the story], these are places that the actual characters would not and could not go.

Because at this point, they’re about merchandising, they’re ongoing characters for a reason and there is money to be made. Superman works in a certain pocket, Wonder Woman in a certain pocket, Batman in a certain dynamic, but unfortunately, they can’t grow much because of those reasons.

BF: Which of the characters was your favorite to write and which proved the most challenging?

JR: At some point, they become like kids and I can’t say that one of them is my favorite. I think the most surprising was Amber Waves. When the book started, Amber and even X-15 were kind of throwaway characters. I didn’t really know where they were going. When I write, I don’t want to know exactly everything that’s going to happen because it allows me to discover the characters. I certainly know where the story is going. I know how it’s going to end. But as I was writing, things would change. Those two characters in particular sort of popped for me. They surprised me and really spoke to me. Not in the sense of it’s late at night and I’m hearing voices but their evolution didn’t go as I had expected. So it became fun.

There were some characters where I knew going in what their final fate would be. Southern Cross, I pretty much knew his evolution and The New American, I certainly knew what his trials and tribulations would be. But these others, I didn’t. With X-15, I knew what his ultimate journey would be but in getting there, he changed a little. And that produced a certain emotion in me that I didn’t expect.

BF: I thought it was an interesting choice to use Mark Twain as the visual and story inspiration for The Captain, the voice of reason on the team. Was there something specific to his work that made him the perfect vehicle for this role?

JR: Absolutely and he talks about it in the book. He talks about Huck Finn. He got a lot of consternation at the time from both abolitionists and more traditional Southerners for having Huck Finn and N****r Jim as friends. A lot of people were upset because he used the word “n****r” and other people were upset because he equated whites and blacks and believed they could be friends or have some kind of relationship that went beyond master/slave.

So, part of it was that I didn’t just want to write this book and have all the Southerners be evil because that’s not true. There’s plenty of bigotry in the South but there’s bigotry in the North too, it just manifests itself in a different way.

So, for me, it was about trying to write a story where you show many aspects of the American psyche with regard to race relations. This was one of them. You talk about the voice of reason and even though [The Captain] is a Southerner, he has this perspective on race. He doesn’t have all the answers but he sees that all things are both unequal and equal at the same time.

BF: Have these characters' stories now been told or would you ever revisit them?

JR: I would certainly revisit them in a fashion. I really don’t like direct sequels. I think they’re very hard to pull off. But I think what makes The American Way unique is that it lives in a particular time and place. And I think if you go back to that time and place, some of the luster is gone. Something that’s spectacular the first time around gets to be mundane.

I think that I would try and return to an American Way universe, much like with Astro City. I guess what I’m saying is that I wouldn’t want to see these characters again in the same configuration and same time period picking up, you know, a week later.

BF: So you feel that the themes of The American Way and its universe could work in another context? Could there potentially be an American Way for each decade?

JR: Oh, absolutely. I think there’s enough going on each decade politically and socially with the American populace where you can tell these kinds of stories in a different way. It doesn’t have to be about race necessarily but with whatever Americans dealt with at those times.

So, if we went through and told a story for the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, well, by then it could potentially be 2010. There’s plenty to talk about and plenty to write about and bringing in these characters, seeing how they evolve and where they go, that would be very exciting to me.

In that sense, The American Way could sustain itself through several more issues without becoming that same story again.

BF: Ultimately, what above all do you hope readers come away with after reading The American Way?

JR: To a degree, I hope they come away with entertainment. I think to write a comic book series and have it be a polemic where people are not entertained or don’t enjoy it, there’s really no point to that. I could write a newspaper article if that’s all I wanted to do.

I do want to entertain people. And in that entertainment…I don’t want to say to educate people, since I don’t think you can truly educate someone on race relations. It’s probably not going to change minds. If you’re not open-minded, you’re not going to read past the second issue when you see a black character come in.

So, I think that while to entertain people is my primary objective, I do want to entertain them in a headier form of storytelling. To show that this is not just Superman lifting cars over his head or Green Lantern in outer space saving aliens. It’s about something. I don’t think being about something and entertaining people have to be mutually exclusive.

Beyond that, my goal was to bring in a character, in particular a hero, of color [The New American]. In my opinion, there aren’t enough of them out there. There have been a lot of black characters that have been in and out of comic books but most of them don’t have any staying power. So for me, it was trying to write a character that, even if there are no other American Way stories, this character can endure. Someone like Rorschach. Even though that character is from one story, people in the comic book world know that character.

For me, it was about adding to that language. I grew up loving comics and at the time, most of the heroes I read about were white. You had aliens of many colors but not that many black characters.

So, I really wanted to add to that and hopefully, I have in some way.