They did do a black Captain America already, and took him seriously, and got a positive critical response to him. I’ve already linked to him. But they had to do more than just say “OK, Steve Rogers is a black guy now”.
Now, see, that’s something that I thought the new Ghostbusters did much better than the original. In the original, Egon was The Nerd, and that was all the characterization they thought he needed, and whenever there was a need for anything nerdy in the script, it was Egon who filled it. In the remake, though, there were three nerds, who were very different kinds of nerds, with very different personalities. They explored nerdity, instead of just pigeonholing it.
Introducing diversity is not the problem. It’s the way it’s handled. People like Falcon, Luke Cage and other superhero minorities. The latter, by the way, just had a whole Netflix series, which was also generally well received. But when you change a known entity like Spiderman or Thor for the sake of diversity! it comes off as insincere. And comic book fans can’t abide insincerity.
Not just insincere but literally everyone knows it’s not a permanent change. The originals will always return, the minority replacement is always going to be an impostor.
They didn’t change Spider-Man. Peter Parker is still Spider-Man. Miles Morales is also Spider-Man, and he’s been so for years since he showed up in the Ultimate universe. Both Spider-Men show up in books.
There’s also multiple Spider-Women: Jessica Drew, and Spider-Gwen (in an alternate universe). And there’s a whole lot of alternate universe Spider-Men, -Women, and -Pigs that just a while back had their own book, too. They got hella diverse, but Peter Parker was still Spider-Man.
Who has gone through more origins than she has revivals of books starring her(none of them really long-running). This is Miles Morales’ second try after having his origin be redone because of a merging of worlds. Spider-Man 2099 is on his 3rd/4th attempt, Spider-Gwen is new(and I hope it works out), and there was a short-lived book starring multiple Spider-Things.
At least in the case of Thor, this story arc has proven to (IMO) be a very interesting, well-done story. It’s not nearly as simple as “Jane Foster is Thor for now,” it’s about how the act of using Mjolnir and becoming Thor is killing Jane. And, it’s about why Thor Odinson (Original Recipe Thor) no longer felt worthy of Mjolnir, and his path to becoming worthy of it once again. (Plus, it presented a pretty cool new origin story for Mjolnir itself.)
So, though I do think it was a publicity stunt, it’s turned out to be a very neat story. (And, Jane’s been Thor for nearly three years now, so it’s been something more than a momentary stunt.)
Actually, a black Superman or Captain America would bother me, because the traditional story for both of them has their origin in a time where being black would radically alter their ‘early years’ story and how they were received by the public. If they’re doing a modern origin I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but the traditional characters came to prominence in an era when segregation was law in the Army and in much of the US, and where lynchings still happened. White Superman can let that nastier side of the era fade into the background, but black Superman really makes you ask ‘why is he doing the cop’s job instead of sitting at a white lunch counter and daring assholes to kick him out?’. White Captain America can be accepted as an ‘all American boy’ sell war bonds and end up going to war with regular army soldiers, but black Captain America is just not going to work the same way.
Batman or Spiderman wouldn’t pose the same problem because they don’t have that kind of acceptance in their back story, and both use a secret identity. A lot of side characters work fine too, it’s not like Alfred would function differently as a black butler. And a black batman could actually make the exposed chin part of his disguise if he put white makeup on on it to misdirect people looking for his secret identity.
I’m not saying the stories can’t be good, Marvel does have some talented writers. But as you said, it is basically a story about how Thor is going to end up being Thor once again, which is entirely the reason why this “temporary diversity” thing is not working.
Slightly off-topic, but I can’t help wondering if that also has something to do with Marvel not owning his movie rights. No reason to make someone else rich promoting their film character.
I believe that Captain America is currently a Nazi sleeper agent (although it’s complicated), so they’ve opted to go in a somewhat different direction.
An horse-faced alien being was Thor for a few years too. It’s a flexible role.
Fair enough, and I think that part of the struggle for Marvel (and DC, too) is that they’ve had very few new characters (of any race or sex) break through in the past 25 years. Looking at the characters in Marvel or DC films, most of them are originally from either the Golden Age or Silver Age. (Though the X-Men were originally a Silver Age team, Wolverine and many of the other characters who’ve showed up in the films came from the 1970s reboot of the title.)
Deadpool and Harley Quinn are the two examples of major / popular characters I can think of from Marvel or DC who originated in the past 25 years, and even they are now around 25 years old. And, frankly, I think that Marvel and DC are guilty of overexposing those two characters in recent years.
This doesn’t seem to stop Marvel or DC from trying new characters, particularly in the team books, but few, if any, of them appear to be generating enough popularity to be able to sustain their own books.
Two older, “diverse” characters who recently had their own series with Marvel were Angela (formerly a part of Spawn’s canon, now retconned to be an Asgardian) and Mockingbird. I enjoyed both books (FWIW, Angela’s book also depicted a lesbian relationship), but both ended – I’m not sure if they were intended to be limited-run series, or cancelled due to low sales.
Very cool. I more than half suspected that my example would turn out to have already happened. I was even thinking that they could reference Tuskegee.
I have an almost completely different take on that, but I’ll spare the thread the further hijack. I may one day make a thread about it, if I’m bored enough. In the meantime, de gustibus.
Excellent point, and one that I’m too old to have picked up on. Heck, I still think of Lobo as a noisy new interloper that the kids seem to be reading these days. More seriously, it’s got to be an uphill climb to keep selling new generations of kids on the same characters that their forefathers once called their own.
They’ve been giving Mister Terrific a steady push – leader of the Justice Society for a good long stint, decent spotlight on the JLU cartoon and in the INFINITE CRISIS series, the supporting-character role on ARROW, even his own comic book – but the guy only ever seems to approach the B-List without quite getting on it.
Captain America, for sure, because he’s so intimately tied to WWII, but Superman? His “origin” operates under the same sliding time scale as any other superhero. There isn’t a definitive answer on how old he’s supposed to be, or how long he’s been active as Superman - or rather, there’s been a lot of conflicting answers - but he’s usually depicted as being somewhere between 29 and 35 years old, and has been known as Superman for less than ten years. Which means his origin is either sometime in the late 1980s (when his ship crashed) or somewhere around the start of the Obama administration (for when he first appeared publicly as Superman).
Kamala Khan, Sam Alexander, and Miles Morales* are *new heroes, even if the names they use are old trademarks. For that matter, the recent Patsy Walker comics, while referencing the character’s history, are reviving a character ignored for so long that she may as well be new.
And Marvel has tried to bring in new characters before, with varying degrees of success. It’s just that for a long time they didn’t market them properly. Look at the kind of push Disney (sometimes) gives a new character. The marketing end of Marvel just kept trying to sell us Stan & Jack’s characters, and that was dumb.
Nope, just Damian Wayne but I’m not claiming my preferences are objective or universal. I don’t think of Damien Wayne because I don’t think he existed as Robin when I stopped reading comics. I’m sure a lot of people think of Dick Grayson as Robin rather than Tim Drake or Jason Todd. Batgirl is still Barbara Gordon to most people and they have no idea who Oracle is.
I’m going to trot out the old pornography line. I know it when I see it. If other people see a new interpretation and like it, well, that’s all well and good. I won’t hold it against them and I’m glad they have something they can enjoy. It’s just not for me.
Miss Marvel and Spiderman are not new heroes, not sure who Sam Alexander is. The names they use are the ENTIRE point, you say Spiderman and the 25 people who still read comic books are the only ones who’ll think of Miles Morales. At the end of the day everyone knows who Captain America, Thor and Spiderman are supposed to be, and they are not Falcon, Jane Foster and Miles Morales. Letting Iron Man be a black female for a little while is not real diversity, it’s simply marking of a checklist so they can say “we did it guys!” high-five each other and then put everything back to normal.
It isn’t about race to me. I would be equally disappointed if they made Blade, Luke Cage, or Storm white. I’ve grown attached to these characters in my formative years and I’m not interested in changing them all that much.
