Hah…good one…
Wait… are you serious?
Hubcaps and comics. You know how we are.
Yeah, I knew that. But Alan Scott was before my time, therefore he doesn’t count by definition. As they say, the Golden Age of Comics was when you were 10, and I was 10 in 1962. 
But, yes, I know they made him into a gay white guy on Earth-2 in the New 52 universe. I’m not far enough into Rebirth yet to know whether Earth-2 is still a thing there. But before that, pre-Crisis, Alan Scott was a married straight guy from Earth-2 with at least one child as I recall.
Yeah, I know. I started picking up Spider-Man when they rebooted it 3 or 4 years ago, but dropped it again when I found I couldn’t keep up with all the inter-dimensional Spider-people.
And, no, you’re right, I didn’t actually read Spectacular Spider-Man. My Marvel consumption has been pretty low this century.
They’re accurate representations of how those characters are currently being drawn. They’re not the sum total of female representation in Marvel books, though. Emma Frost apparently still can’t find her damn pants, and for reasons beyond understanding, hack porn tracer Greg Land keeps getting work, so there’s still a little bit to go.
I disagree with using “heh heh ur GAY!” as a way to put down people you don’t like. I don’t particularly care how you dress it up.
Falcon’s one of the current two Captains America - Steve being the other one, but he’s secretly evil right now. Falcon’s not the first black Captain America, though. During WWII, there was a Tuskeegee-style experiment to replicate the super soldier serum, using unwitting black soldiers as test cases. Isaiah Bradley was the only survivor. Things didn’t work out too well for him, though - he ended up getting court martialled and imprisoned unfairly, and the flawed super soldier serum gives him early onset alzheimers.
Man is a gender neutral term. That’s what women have been hearing since the beginning of time. It’s why we don’t have to use he/she, him/her or gender neutral terms. So Iron-Man doesn’t mean he is a man, just that “he’s” human.
I don’t really believe what I wrote up there but I think it’s worth noting that if women only responded when the right gender is used to refer to us we’d not be responding very often.
Your musician analogy doesn’t really hold water, “Bob Dylan” is a real person’s known name, which would be analogous to “Steve Rogers.” No one else is taking the name Steve Rogers, they’re taking “Captain America” which is more of a title. If you’re looking for a real life analogy to the idea of a Legacy Character, then consider titles like Emperor, King or Pope. They usually have a formal number on the end to tell them apart, but that’s it (and comic fans would long append an informal number to differentiate characters with the same name!). Add in the fact that superheroes might have ‘secret’ identities and it holds up. Or you could even look ISIS commander al-Baghdadi, who a lot of people think is a position not a real name.
And of course, marketing has a lot to do with it too. It’s a lot easier to sell a new “Captain America” than sell a completely new character.
Heh. Good point. You can’t simultaneously complain about (for example) “fireman” being changed to “fireperson” and also “Iron-Man” not referring to a male person. At least, not without looking kind of silly.
Who has worn the Iron Man armor?
It’s not like this is particularly new in the world of comics.
This is insulting to people like Al Feldstein and Joe Orlando, both “white dudes” who confronted the Comics Code Authority in the 50’s for producing a story with a black male lead that was “a strong allegory on the evils of race prejudice.” If you want to retcon this into some “thank ya, massa” persecution fantasy I guess there will be no pleasing you.
I don’t think this is true. The reason Marvel made a female Thor instead of say, elevating Lady Sif into her own blockbuster huge sales comic is because it wouldn’t work. You say you want it and you’d pay for it but this has historically not been the case. Marvel and DC want your money, as does Hollywood. If all-black, all female, all the time made them billions, that’s what you’d be getting, all the time. This whole, “give me what I want and I’ll buy it” doesn’t always work. People need to make livings.
People should also acknowledge that art is changing as well.
Titillating “ultra-realistic” fan-service art is actually not the base-line for the mainstream comics world anymore. The argument of “more females means opportunities to try to titillate the fan base” is ridiculously out of date.
Give me a break on the deliberate misunderstandings. I never said no one ever did a comic casting black people in good light. The fact that you needed to dig up a very well known exception proves the point. The story stands out because it was such an anomaly. Maybe you read some of the comics you claim dominion over. Black characters having the word Black in their names is a longstanding in-joke along with having electricity powers.
Again, shoveling shit to consumers and complaining that sales are poor proves nothing. Take a look at how well Black Panther did when Christopher Priest was writing it. Then look at it afterwards. Of course Priest was actually a competent writer. Then Marvel, apparently, thought "Reginald Hudlin is black, he’s known, let’s get him to write. Surprise, surprise. A shit writer couldn’t get people to buy shit comics.
No one is asking for All-Black or All-Female. Nice try. What would be nice though, would be not being talked down to or tacked on try check a box.
I guess people aren’t making enough of a living sticking with the status quo, else that wouldn’t be making changes not one forced on them. Maybe the companies have decided that appealing to only one demographic is not a sustainable business model.
It’s hardly “all” the Marvel heroes. Let’s see: Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Captain America (both), Spider-Man (both), Daredevil, the Sam Alexander Nova, Dr. Strange, Cable, the Silver Surfer, Deadpool, and Moon Knight, to name some major characters, are still male. So are the Beast, Cyclops, & a bunch of other characters that don’t have their own books but are high-profile anyway.
They’re just getting to balance. And it’s a long-overdue correction for a company that used to have a very strong tilt to male headliners.
I just looked at Mike Deodato’s big group images for the “United We Stand” promotion, and they are almost exactly gender-balanced. Exactly, if I ignore the giant dragon-looking foot. Given Marvel’s misogynist past and the “bro” culture of the industry even ten years ago, that’s an accomplishment. This is one thing Disney-Marvel is getting right.
As for the OP’s examples:[ul]
[li]There is still a male Hulk, Amadeus Cho. Two, actually, when U.S.Avengers comes out, and Thunderbolt Ross becomes Red Hulk again.[/li][li]There’s going to be a miniseries about the Odinson, called “The Unworthy Thor.”[/li][li]Making Carol into Captain Marvel was specifically about retooling her away from a cheesecake heroine, and having a serious flagship character in the Marvel name. [/li][li]Ironheart is not only female, but young and black, to offer contrast to Tony Stark. We’ll see where it goes.[/li][/ul]
You did miss a few, I guess:
[ul]
[li]Since Logan died, his daughter Laura started using the Wolverine name and a version of her dad’s old suit. But there’s also an alternate reality Logan running around the main MU. Wolverine’s a pretty weird title right now.[/li][li]There’ve been one or two female Black Panthers, but T’Challa is still around and part of the “Ultimates” with Captain Marvel and Galactus.[/li][li]The star of the new Hawkeye is female, of course, but the other Hawkeye (Hawkguy to fans) is still around. Which one is seen more of varies a lot.[/li][/ul]
The Dr. Fate whose series is wrapping up is Egyptian-American, I think. And there was a female Dr. Fate in the 1980’s. But yeah, I think there have been at least three white males to go by Dr. Fate.
I think Modern English “man” is both a word for person which should not be gendered, and a gendered word; due to the attitudes of Christians a thousand years ago. I think we need more synonyms for the “male person” sense to make the historical not-gendered usages less jarring.
Ah, but we’re talking about comic books! Who makes a living in this industry?
Huh? Is that a racial joke? I thought the proliferation of Black Lightning knockoffs started with confusion at DC about whether the company or the original writer owned Black Lightning.
“I’m not ‘Black Tiger.’ I’m Tiger. I just happen to be black.”
Laura Kinney is Logan’s clone, not daughter.
It’s a suit of armor. That’s what “Iron Man” means most of the time: the guy who wears the suit.
Tony Stark should be a man, and I don’t think anyone is arguing with that. But most of these hero titles are just that: titles. Mantles that the hero in question earned through some feat, and which others could similarly earn.
COMICS! ARE! WEIIIIIIIRD!
Anyone? Anyone?
Speaking of John Stewart being replaced by a black guy, how’s that latest run of the Daily Show been? 
And you thought Squirrel Girl was stupidly overpowered before.
4 - two of which have been named Kent Nelson!* - 5, if you count Fate, who is part of the legacy, but didn’t use the title ‘Doctor’. Both the women who’ve used the name were related to men who’ve also used it - Linda Strouss shared the name (and body) with her son, Eric, and they were succeeded by Kent (the first)'s wife, Inza. It’s a very incestuous identity, really. (I half expect the Strousses to be related to the Nelsons, somehow.) And nobody who’s used any incarnation of the Fate identity in stories set at the time they were written has been anything other than white until the two Khalids - Ben-Hassin in Earth 2, Nasour in Dr Fate, both of whom appeared post-2011 - despite the middle-eastern connections.
- The last one before the relaunch was Kent V Nelson, great nephew of the original Kent Nelson, just like his post-relaunch replacement, Khalid…although he was older (a practicing psychologist, rather than a med student) and had a different specialty (Kalid’s likely to become a physician).
Actually they do. The industry is still overwhelmingly owned and run by white dudes. The quest for diversity is, as always in big business, powered by the quest for more profit. For white dudes.
What always gets me about these complaints is that fans are fine when comic books are chock full of people shape changing, aliens becoming humans, mind swaps, alternate timeline versions of heroes, and numerous other big character switches. But you swap gender on a few characters, and all of a sudden it’s a Controversey and they’re Pandering and Destroying Tradition and being Politically Correct.