One of the first major black superheroes was Marvel's Black Panther, who premiered in early issues of another comic, the Fantastic Four, more than 30 years ago. Despite several attempts, the Black Panther has never had a successful ongoing comic.

Another early black hero was the Falcon, who was Captain America's partner for a time. The Falcon has had an even less impressive publishing history, with only one limited series to his credit.

More recently, Marvel published two series featuring revamped 1970s black heroes, but both were canceled because of poor sales. Cage, which featured the hero formerly known as Power Man, was canceled last year after only 20 issues. Blade, the Vampire Hunter was revived in his own series just last year but has already been given a pink slip.

Currently, the only comic Marvel publishes with a black protagonist is War Machine. Because War Machine is a completely armored character, the color of his skin does not show.

But Marvel has not totally given up on their black heroes. A recent miniseries featuring the X-Man Bishop was a top-seller, and the X-Men comics themselves feature an ethnically diverse group of heroes.

Although Marvel comics has attempted to publish many comics featuring minority characters through the years, Marvel Archivist Paul Curtis said they do not usually last because people do not tend to buy them.

"Usually (the buyers are) middle-class kids who have money to spend on comic books, and unfortunately, more often than not, those middle-class kids are white," Curtis said.

However, he defended Marvel by saying that if they were driven only by profits, they would use black characters once, and if the series failed, discard them altogether. And while characters such as the Black Panther and the Falcon might be favorites of Marvel writers, the demand to publish more of their exploits just is not there.

"The sad thing is the readership tends to want to see stories about white characters," Curtis said.

But DC Comics did manage to successfully launch two series featuring black heroes last year. The first was Steel, the armored Superman fill-in from the period when he was thought to be dead. And just three months ago, Black Lightning, a mid-'80s hero, graduated to the spotlight.

DC took another giant step when they entered into an agreement with Milestone Media, Inc. to publish a line of culturally and ethnically diverse superhero comics. DC's deal with Milestone -- in which DC distributes all of Milestone's books and provides merchandising, licensing and promotional resources, with Milestone retaining ownership -- is unheard of in the industry.

Jackie Ching, an editor at Milestone, said their heroes fill a gap that existed in the comics industry.

"The founders created a realism-based universe featuring minority characters that were missing in the mainstream companies," Ching said.

DC's Martha Thomases said the mind-set of the marketplace can sometimes be harmful to releasing a successful ethnic comic.

"If the assumption is that the comic won't sell because it features a black hero, then shops won't order them. Then they really won't sell because they haven't been ordered," Thomases said, adding that most of those low orders are based on wrong assumptions. "It's not that there's a big conspiracy saying that there shouldn't be any African-American superheroes."

Thomases said she thought that DC was "very gutsy and very smart" when they decided to throw in with Milestone, because Milestone has disproven the assumption that black superheroes will not sell.

"I think the real consideration is how good a story is, how compelling are the characters?" Thomases said.

However, it is hard to judge how a comic will sell by the race of the heroes within. Kris Boose, owner of the Comic Swap, 110 S. Fraser St., said books that feature minority superheroes each sell differently. For example, War Machine has been falling off in sales, but a book like Black Lightning sells well because it features an established character.

"He was in the Justice League. He was on the Superfriends," Boose said. "I think of him as one of DC's premiere superheroes."

And although Black Lightning is a black superhero, Boose said he did not consider that when placing his orders.

"I didn't say 'Ooh, I gotta order less of these,' " he said.

Although the Milestone books have a loyal fan base, it's not a huge one, Boose said.

"The steady readers tell me the books are well-crafted and have good storylines," Boose said. "I don't think I've heard anything bad about them."

Local comics readers said the color of a hero's skin is not usually a factor in deciding what comics they want to buy.

Shane Lanzendorfer (senior-English) said although he does not read too many comics with minority heroes, it is not a conscious choice.

"There's not too many that are out there," he said, adding that it is the character, not the color, that decides what he spends his money on.

"It would depend on the character. If he was cool, I'd buy it," he said.

Lanzendorfer also said he does not think there is a balanced representation of black heroes in comics.

"They don't receive equal attention. The proportion is getting better, and you can't expect things to become equal all at once," he said.

Justin Valliyil (sophomore-science) agreed with Lanzendorfer, but added that readers today have more of a choice than they did five years ago.

"Recent companies like Image or Dark Horse can just create whatever they want," he said. Comics like Spawn and ShadowHawk from Image prominently feature black heroes.

Valliyil said long-established characters, such as Superman and Batman, already have built-in audiences that newer characters take years to accumulate.

"Nowadays I guess there are a lot of different black heroes, more than in the past," he said.

Although there are definitely more black superheroes than in the past, not everyone in the industry agreed that Milestone's product properly portrayed black people.

At about the same time that Milestone broke onto the comics scene, ANIA, a group of independent black comic creators, made allegations that Milestone had sold out to the mainstream, producing sanitized versions of black heroes. But Ching said Milestone never took those allegations too seriously.

"They said they were blacker than us," laughed Ching, who added that stories of competition between the two groups were totally false. "We paid no attention to them, and now they're gone."

Indeed, after publishing only a few books, ANIA faded into the woodwork.

And as for black characters from other companies, Ching said they probably fail because they are often stereotypical.

"They were what people thought black people might sound like," Ching said. "Our characters are not presented as stereotypes. They are people with opinions formed by personal experiences. You don't get this one catchall character that's the sum of the race."

But although a multicultural character base is an integral piece of their publishing strategy, Milestone Associate Editor Matt Wayne stressed that it's not the only main thrust of the company.