A. Willem de Kooning was the only historical figure I could find that had that name. I totally get the “named after an artist” angle.

B. Your point is essentially the answer I’ve been looking for all along: “What was the genesis of this character?” Thanks for clarifying.

C. I don’t think it’s oversimplifying to call Kooning a negative character. I definitely agree that the character was turned around before his end (and for the record, I happen to have truly enjoyed Iron Man #26). But the majority of his time in Iron Man was spent as Tony’s chief political antagonist, seeking to give him a hard time at every turn. Am I not correct in saying that? To that end, I don’t think it’s a stretch to see most of Kooning’s actions as negative to the overall goals of the title character (hell, didn’t Kooning enable Mandarin to get involved with Extremis “research”?).

D. I don’t think the “linguistic gymnastics” are much of a stretch. It’s the equivalent of having the only recurring white character in Black Panther named “Steve Kracker” (something that online fans would certainly have a field day with).

Let me just sum everything by saying this: after your post here, I completely see how this happened. To me, the whole thing looks like an unfortunate confluence of circumstances. I’m unsatisfied that no one at Marvel caught (or was even aware of) the implications of Jack Kooning’s character before he went to print. Yeah, I know I’m taking something that’s fairly obscure (and irrelevant to the majority of comic book fans) and investing a lot of energy into it. But what I’ve been voicing for about the past year are genuine concerns I’ve had after becoming acquainted with the character of Senator Kooning and his portrayal in the pages of Iron Man.

Wow, I can’t believe you’re still on this non-issue of Jack Kooning. And I think you misrepresent the responses at the panel a little bit–Joe Q didn’t look like a deer in headlights, he looked like a man who hadn’t the faintest idea what you were talking about, since absolutely nobody outside of yourself had ever commented to him about Kooning.

But just to try to put the matter to rest–though I know this is the Internet and doing this is only going to give it more attention–I asked the Knaufs to remind me once again about the historical figure after which they’d named Kooning. They replied:

A. The name Jack Kooning was inspired by the name of the artist Willem de Kooning (we like to name our characters after literary figures or artists);

B. We did not describe his race in the original script (we never do unless it’s relevant to the plot). Patrick Zircher chose to draw Kooning as an African American.

C. To describe Kooning as a “negative” character is to oversimplify him to the point of absurdity, given his backstory and the heroic sacrifice he makes to correct his errors in judgement. He is not evil, but jaded and misguided.

D. The linguistic gymnastics one has to go through to consider Kooning’s name a racial slur are are more revealing of the racist attitudes of the accuser than the accused.

So hopefully this covers it.

Tom B