Christian Cooper, survivor of racist Central Park incident, wrote Star Trek’s first “out” gay character, in Marvel’s Starfleet Academy

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy #17 and Christian Cooper. Images Amazon.com and Facebook

The Memorial Day holiday here in the U.S. was rocked with the explosive story on Monday that a white woman, Amy Cooper, walking her dog in New York City’s Central Park attempted to call the police on a black man who asked her to leash her dog. The victim, Christian Cooper (no relation to Amy), caught the racist incident on video, and it led on Tuesday to the firing of the woman from her job at a New York investment firm.

As more details emerged about the victim, Cooper, on Tuesday, it turns out that not only is he a dog lover and an avid birdwatcher, he’s also a Star Trek trailblazer.

A piece from The Advocate reports that Cooper, a former writer at Marvel Comics, was the man behind the character of Cadet Yoshi Mishima, who E! Online calls the first “outed” regular character in Star Trek. Cadet Mishima was a character from Marvel’s Starfleet Academy, a short-lived comic series that ran for 19 issues between 1996 and 1998.

The incident in Central Park was controversial because it brought up issues of white privilege (especially white women’s privilege) and its contributions to police violence against people of color. It was especially powerful against the news that another black man, George Floyd, was killed by police in Minneapolis on Monday evening, when one of them kneeled on his neck to restrain him during an arrest.