Just because I like
to occasionally riff on stuff that’s not of earth-shattering
importance.
Look at superheroes. We all got very
excited about the recent Black Panther film, and the first black
superheroes. The film took in more than $1.3-billion worldwide,
proving once again that there is a huge black market.
Some people argued that it wasn’t a
big deal. There were always black superheroes. What about Blade,
Hancock, Cyborg and Iron Man’s sidekick? Black people should stop
being greedy, I mean, there are at least five black superheroes. How
many do you they want? Well, do you know how many there are in total?
Marvel lists 7,000 official characters. DC Comics claims to have
more.
So five out of a possible 14-15
thousand?! Yes, black people, you should be satisfied with that. Know
your place.
Yeah, back in the
late 40s, early 50s, we saw superheroes like Superman, Captain
America, Batman, Sub-Mariner, Wonder Woman, etc. In the 60s, we got
another wave. Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk.
There have been cool
characters since, the new X-Men (Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, etc.),
the re-booted Swamp Thing, his occasional foil John Constantine, The
Endless (Dream, Death, Desire, etc.), the new Teen Titans (Cyborg,
Raven, etc.). But yeah, as most of the possible powers and character
types have been used up (The Legion of Superheroes has made some
appearances in DC TV shows, but characters like Shadow Lass and
Triplicate Girl are kind of ridiculous and hard to find useful
employment for), it’s hard to assemble diverse teams today without
deciding to, say, turn Nick Fury from a white character into a black
one.
Spider-Man has done
a good job with diversity. The initial character Peter Parker is
getting a bit aged. Marvel ages its characters about a year for every
seven years that pass in the real world. Franklin Richards, son of
Reed and Sue of the Fantastic Four, was born in the mid-60s but is
only in his tweens today. So even though Parker was a high-schooler
back when he was invented, he’s long since graduated college and is
running his own company.
So, time for a new
Spider-Man, one who isn’t quite so old. Marvel decided to make the
younger Spider-Man black. Hmm, how to get a female Spider-Man? Well,
Gwen Stacey was Peter’s first love and she died tragically back in
the 70s, so how about a Gwen from a different dimension who received
spider-powers instead of Peter? Niches can be found, but it takes
some imagining to fill them without just throwing all-new characters
at people.
Ms. Marvel is
filling another niche. Captain Marvel was a blond male. When he died,
Ms. Marvel, a blond female, took over. The blond female has since
taken up the Captain Marvel name while the name of Ms. Marvel went to
a Muslim Pakistani teenager (She wears a very modest outfit and her
comic goes into her family and background). So again, Marvel is
trying to introduce new characters without just coming up with
completely all-new creations.
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