Despite Wonder Woman being an early exception to the rule, it is an unavoidable fact that in the 1930s - 1940s, the history of modern comic books began with an almost entirely male, almost entirely white cast of characters. So, too, were these early comics written and drawn solely by men - albeit with some amount of ethnic diversity. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, and Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg), the creator of Captain America, were all Jewish. The iconic cover of the Captain's first issue, which depicts the star-spangled supersoldier punching Adolf Hitler, was very much Kirby's idea.
Alongside the famed Stan Lee (born Stanley Lieber), another Jewish comics creator, Kirby proved an influential figure across multiple decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, Kirby and Lee strove to introduce new characters into the growing Marvel Comics cast - characters who would allow them to tell stories of marginalized groups throughout the world. Black Panther, a superhero whose alter ego is an African king, stood as a symbol of Black empowerment during the Civil Rights Era, while also providing a commentary against the still-ongoing European colonialism in his home continent. Meanwhile, the highly diverse X-Men, a team of "mutants" who share the common bond of having been born with superpowers rather than having obtained them, served as an allegory for all of the people who are rejected by society's bigotries and prejudices.
Outside of the superhero genre, as discussed previously in this guide, Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman centered their comics and graphic novels around the distinctly Jewish experiences of their cultural backgrounds. In today's comics landscape, increased representation has allowed for a much wider range of stories to be told. Among many other titles, Gene Luen Yang uses Chinese folktales to reflect on the Asian-American immigrant experience in American Born Chinese (2006), while Malaka Gharib presents her own multi-ethnic family heritage in I Was Their American Dream (2019). Various aspects of Black history, meanwhile, have been depicted in novels such as Mat Johnson's Incognegro (2008) and Rob Vollmar and Pablo Callejo's Bluesman (2008), while Tony Medina's I Am Alfonso Jones (2017) addresses the issue of police shootings and the present-day Black Lives Matter movement.
Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes by 
Graphic Borders: Latino Comic Books Past, Present, and Future by 
Be Gay, Do Comics!: Queer History, Memoir, and Satire by 
(Gender Queer, author / illustrator: Maia Kobabe; Oni Press, 2019, p. 25.)
One area in which comics representation has especially grown during the 21st century is in the increased number of stories being told by and about members of the LGBT+ community. Lesbian comics artist Alison Bechdel, who created her namesake Bechdel Test in her underground comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (1983 - 2008), shifted her talents from this format to that of the graphic memoir with the 2006 publication of her acclaimed book Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Throughout Fun Home, Bechdel explores her connections to both her own sexuality and her fraught relationship with her father, who she later learned was himself a closeted gay man.
Much like Art Spiegleman's Maus, the success of Fun Home was another pivotal turning point for what types of stories were presented in comics, and whose stories were now, in turn, considered fit for mainstream publication. Jul Maroh's Blue is the Warmest Color (2010) achieved a distinction currently unmatched by any other graphic novel when it was adapted into a 2013 film which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes - often considered cinema's most prestigious award. Within more recent years, the newest LGBT+ comics titles have tended to focus on issues of gender identity as well as sexual orientation. Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer (2019) explores the author's non-binary identity and gender dysphoria, while Emma Grove's The Third Person (2022) is a memoir about being transgender while also experiencing dissociative identity disorder.
Gender Queer has achieved a particularly unique amount of recognition since its publication, to the point where it may now be the most well-known (if not necessarily most-read) graphic novel in the United States. While it is noteworthy for winning an Alex Award from the American Library Association, this accolade is somewhat overshadowed by the fact that the ALA has also reported Gender Queer to be the country's most consistently challenged and banned book. Since its publication, Kobabe's memoir has been removed from multiple school districts and public libraries in several states, with a dismissed obscenity lawsuit in Virginia having gone so far as to challenge its presence in bookstores as well.
