User blog comment:Nausiated/Race and Racism in Marvel Comics - From World War II to 9/11/@comment-3317214-20110815141215/@comment-61022-20110815225545

To my memory, there are three Australian characters in the Marvel Universe that I know about. There is Pyro.. The other two are Aboriginals. The first one to appear was Talisman, who first appeared in Contest of Champions #1, he hasn't really been seen since because he was mostly created for that series. He had a bull roarer that could create "Dream Time" that were hallucinations and what-have-you. Then there's Gateway, the X-Man character, a mute aboriginal originally enslaved by the Reavers before being freed by the X-Men. He could create portals to different locations in time and space. It was hinted at some point in some obscure X-Men comic from the 90's that he and Bishop might be related. However a quick look at this page: http://marvel.wikia.com/Category:Australians shows that there are quite a few characters.

Your history lesson on the Aboriginals of Australia is not unlike the residential schools in Canada where they removed native children from the reservations and attempted to raise them "white". Force them to speak English, adopt Christianity etc. etc. Not exactly a sterling moment in Canadian history as there was a lot of abuse in these residential schools, and of course there was the long term psychological impact and so on. Our government just recently formally apologized and sent out reparations (better late than never I suppose)

As for Australian stereotypes in Marvel Comics... To be honest, I don't really thing there was all that much. I think there are the usual cracks about Caucasian Australians here and there, but by the time Marvel began publishing stories that featured Aboriginal Australians the perchance for stereotypes were long removed from Marvel's code of ethics.