Realistic Expectations of a More Racially Diverse Justice League

Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak is an internet comic artist who has been getting quite a bit of attention lately for some rather inspired updates to Batman and the Justice League following DC Comics' own maligned "New 52" reboot.

It occurred to me that most Superheroes are by nature either near-human aliens or empowered humans, generally white and American, given the birthplace of the pulp genre. However, if we're going to take into account actual global ethnicity numbers, an "accurately" diverse Justice League would be about a quarter Chinese and Indian, have a couple ambiguously white guys, a Latina/o, Buzz Aldrin, and like one black dude.

Then again, if we're taking the ethnicity of superheroes, we really ought to be finding out the demographics of those most likely to be in close proximity to

A) Industrial accidents, and
B) Space aliens.

Space aliens are easy. If we went somewhere to meat them, the professional space-persons are most likely American, Russian, European, and now possibly Asian. NASA, the ESA, the RFK, China's CNSA, and Japan's JAXA are the only organizations capable of launching an asshole into Earth orbit. (Also Richard Branson.) If they get superpowers after a close encounter, these are the men and women who will fight crime.

NASA: Our phone number is (713) 483-3111.

Then again, if aliens land on Earth, there's a 73% chance they splashdown in water, and that means a whole bunch of Aquamen/super-sturgeons.

Industrial accidents are the other chief method of gaining tights and ripped calves. So to figure out the diversity angle there, we should really be taking into account both the total number of scientists in various countries and the total number of nuclear/radiation/chemical accidents in these same countries per annum.

I expected this to mean most of out terrestrial supers would be from former Soviet bloc countries and possibly North Korea, and now approximately one fifth of the island of Honshu in Japan. Interestingly, the United States has more confirmed nuclear accidents than any other country by far. The same goes for astronaut fatalities both in the ether and during training.

So, basically, the Justice League should be a couple aliens who take on the form of or suitably advance Earth marine life, then a bunch of genius Americans with crappy/incredible luck, and a few irradiated Japanese business men. Or maybe some of those abandoned dogs. Yeah, a Hulk chow chow? How cute would that be? (Oops, that's be The Avengers, I guess.)

"Everyone gets a little younger, but the sidekicks stay the same. Also, fuck J'onn."