My friend pointed out Blade when I asked him if there were any Black, British supers in DC or Marvel.
And is Idris Elba (Bloodsport) the only black British meta in the DC/MCU movies??
As far as the MCU films, there are several black supers, but all of the ones I can think of are either American (Falcon/Captain America, War Machine), or Wakandan (Black Panther et al).
Edit: Also in the MCU is Maria Rambeau (appeared in WandaVision, no superhero name yet), who’s also American. Storm of the X-Men is half-Kenyan, half-American (at least that’s her background in the comics), but the X-Men movies are not yet considered part of the MCU continuity.
There really aren’t that many British superheroes in Marvel or DC, period. Wikipedia only lists 23 British superheroes total, ever, from all media. That’s obviously an undercount (they don’t list Marvelman/Miracleman, probably the single most prominent UK superhero, for example), but still, it’s a pretty small sample size. Marvel and DC superheroes are overwhelmingly American, and extraterrestrials probably outnumber non-American humans. Add to that the fact that for decades Marvel and DC superheroes were overwhelmingly white, and the intersection of “Black”, “British”, and “Superhero” is unfortunately going to be pretty small.
Add to that the fact that in the American imagination, at least until very recently, the UK has been very much a White country. Heck, in the British imagination, until fairly recently, it seems like the UK was a pretty White country. In the last couple of decades, British TV and movie exports to the U.S. have had increasingly diverse casts, but for most of the history of Marvel and DC comics, their writers and artists would mostly have been consuming pretty darn White depictions of the UK.
In the DCEU, I’m trying to think of any other British metas, of any description, and…Gaius Grieves, also from The Suicide Squad is the only one I can come up with.
In the MCU, Karl Mordo from Doctor Strange is played by a Black, British actor, and is presumably supposed to be a British character. Beyond that, the only other British MCU meta of any description I can come up with is Captain Carter, from What If…?.
The MCU’s Asgardians have British accents, for some reason, and, interestingly, Idris Elba plays Heimdall in the MCU, so he may be the only Black meta with a British accent in both in the MCU and the DCEU.
It’s also true that there are a lot of British actors who have prominent roles in the MCU and the DCEU, but very few of them are Black, and a lot of them are Idris Elba.
*By the way, technically, Bloodsport in the DCEU isn’t a meta, he’s just a highly skilled killer with high-tech weapons.
Thank you GDave!! That was very interesting and insightful!
Edit: Yeah off the top of my head, I see Wolfsbane isn’t on that super-hero list. Neither is Moira McTaggert, but she’s only recently a meta, and possibly not a ‘hero’.
That reminded me that Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) is another Black Asgardian, with a British accent, of course.
(I suspect that they have those accents because, in the comic books, Asgardians often spoke with flowery, pseudo-Shakespearean language.)
There was Manchester Black on the CW’s Supergirl, who was a black British man played by David Ajala. He did hook up with some superpowered beings but I don’t think he actually had any superpowers until he managed to steal a technomagic device.
D’oh. Yeah, of course, can’t believe I forgot her. So Idris Elba is only 2/3 of the total population of Black metas with British accents in the DCEU/MCU.
It’s funny. I’d have been fine with the MCU making Stephen Strange English. But for some reason Benedict Cumberbatch’s condescension in an American accent works better for me. Maybe because our ears are trained to hear all English people as slightly sneering. So when i hear that perfectly trained sneering in an American accent it makes me laugh.
“Please. Scooby-Doo this crap.”
It always amazes me that there’s a comic book character named Manchester Black.
Between Cumberbatch, Benedict Wong, Tilda Swinton, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, you have to wonder how the producers were apparently unable to find any American actors for a movie set in New York City.
Only one of those characters is a New Yorker (although Rachel McAdams is Canadian, so they’re 0 for 2 for Americans playing New Yorkers). I wonder how they were apparently only able to find a single actor of Asian descent for a movie set in Tibet.