The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1488: Steelgrip Starkey #5, January 1987

I'm a little confused by the character of Flyin' Ryan in this series. He's Steelgrip's faithful sidekick, a Vietnam veteran, and a bit of a bruiser. He also uses some racially-insensitive language that I find to be an interesting contrast to some of the other characters in the comic. Where you've got "bad" characters, who are dismissive of people based on race or sex, Ryan's sexism and racism is more of the casual kind, where he's using language that, to him, is not insulting, but definitely is to others. Even in the first issue, as the two meet Shari, Steelgrip admonishes Ryan for using terms that are racially-insensitive.

So what confuses me is how we're to take this character. Is the casual racism meant to be contrasted to the worse stuff, so that we can see the relative lack of harm that comes from Ryan's more playful or innocent racism (an ugly sentence to write, for sure), or is he there to demonstrate that even kind-hearted people can use racist language, and that it's just as bad? In an attempt to be optimistic, I'm going with the latter - the commentary on American culture that's happening in the series focusses on the damage that the culture itself does to people. The rival in today's issue (and, honestly, this story really reminded me of the set-up for a wacky anime) ends up going mad because he can't beat the Star Key team in a round the world construction race. Ryan sums him up as a "glory hog...just [in it for] the reward," to which Steelgrip replies that he "was a man...a hard working man...who lost his sense of perspective." Steelgrip is unfailingly forgiving of people who have been corrupted by a system that tells them they're worthless if they're not the best.

Sounds familiar.

I think what we've got here is a comic attempting to deal with social justice issues in a time when the language around such issues was just getting started. I'm finding it fascinating, in much the same way I do with Steve Gerber's writing, to see how relevant this comic, 33 years old this year, continues to be for our present day and age.

"An' the Star Key experiment ain't over yet!"