#also unlike the pre reboot storyline they cant be botehred to name the subset his family is from

[captainlordauditor]

@perseph​​ reblogging so I can add pictures and because this was getting too long for the replies:

I use “recent” kind of loosely, but it was after the most recent reboot, so in my head it qualifies. It was around 2016, 2017, the beginning of the current run (something like issues 1-8 or something like that). It was very, very, very bad, in every way - the colorism is just the fastest complaint to fit in the limited space of a tumblr reply. The summary of it is that Nightwing gets a new villain Raptor who's an old friend of his mother's, and is a thief who um [checks notes] steals from and kills rich people and is mad that Bruce raised Dick instead of a Rom foster parent. Raptor is of course several shades darker skinned than Dick:

This is from a later appearance, but he’s drawn the same both times. Yes, that is Dick on the left. These men are supposed to be the same ethnicity). Raptor also appears in Deathstroke, where Christopher Priest, a Black writer, presumably took one look at this and said “WTF”, and wrote him with (somewhat) more sympathy, and well....

I mean, I’m all for Dick running into a friend of his parents who is upset he was raised by Bruce, but putting it on the same page as said character’s big villain speech is just a bad idea.

And this is why I won’t buy any books by Tim Seeley.

I know you’re a Marvel person, but what are your thoughts on Zatanna from DC?

I really haven't read much about her. I find her to be one of those elusive characters who is very different in every continuity reboot and adaptation-- which is my biggest challenge with DC in general. So I can't really speak that much to her characterization or her storylines.

I do think that the concept of a stage magician who does real magic is super fun and I appreciate that her aesthetic and visual style are so distinct among super heroes and, specifically, among magic characters. She is a very unique character, and I get the appeal.

I'm not really a big fan of the homo magi concept. On the one hand, it provides a more cohesive and functional framework for magic in the larger superhero setting than what Marvel has. On the other hand, it tends to scrub out the uniqueness of cultural magic practices and overshadow ancient religions and mythologies, which are usually afforded a lot of gravity and power in the Marvel world. You can probably imagine which approach I prefer.

I know that there have been indications of Zatanna having Romani ancestry, but I've had a hard time tracking down specific instances. From what I understand, they're pretty few and far between, and don't often amount to more than vague stereotyping and racist language. Dick Grayson has a similar problem, where his heritage (which was retroactively established several decades into his publication history) was only seriously featured in one poorly executed storyline and is otherwise just gestured at in a manner that usually comes off pretty problematic. In both cases, Romani heritage exists only to lend exoticism to their magical nature or sexuality.

The Grayson and Zatara families both come from showman and performer backgrounds, which are traditional occupations in many Romani communities. In comic books and related media, we're mostly represented as fortune tellers, witches, and itinerant workers who live in caravans. Exploring showman culture would be a refreshing change of pace, and the stage magician aesthetic would be cool subversion of the Romani witch archetypes, but it would certainly take a lot of careful work to get it right.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like writers are actually interested in showcasing either Dick or Zatanna's heritage in those contexts. I've read both The Lost Carnival and Jewel of Gravesend-- standalone graphic novels that retell Dick and Zatanna's early lives in modern settings. Both of those books would have been perfect opportunities to incorporate Romani visibility into their family lives and performer lifestyle, but that's not what happened, and honestly, I was pretty disappointed. That pretty much sums up my feelings about both Dick and Zatanna-- I'd really like for them to be fully realized Romani characters, but their representation has been very minimal and largely offensive. I think they'd both need a major overhaul-- Zatanna especially-- to bring it to a place of authenticity.