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In terms of race, do comic books offer stereotypes?

Comic books do offer stereotypes in terms of race. As much as I would like to deny and argue that comic book do not offer stereotypes, I would be lying; although they offer few stereotypes about African Americans, they are not above offering stereotypes in times of war: WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War. In those comics, they characters were depicted as evil, stupid, yellow characters with broken english and few, if any, redeeming qualities. This is not to say that comic books create or propagate these stereotypes because they are racists, but rather because they are American and trying to represent American values in times of war to rally American support: Nazis depicted with pointy ears and other misshapen features to denote otherness. Therefore, comics do not offer stereotypes as a means to belittle other races, but rather to depict American sentiments and their own political agendas. This is especially seen with the comic book industry's portrayal of African Americans: they didn't include them. While this can be seen as the ultimate act of racial stereotyping in that African Americans cannot be super heroes, I like to think they were not included to avoid the whole issue of race within comics because when African Americans were included in comics with Lobo, Luke Cage, the Falcon, Black Panther, etc. they were fully powered super heroes (minus Lobo) that were equal to if not greater than white characters; especially Luke cage, which is especially apparent in the New Avengers in the first 20 issues.

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