Comic controversies (request for help)

not sure if these are perfect fits but:

nick fury was race-bent in the movies

blink seems race-bent for the movies (I don't think she was asian in the comics)

all the characters from Big Hero 6 were race-bent for the movie except for Hiro (though one could argue about Honey Lemon; she had a japanese name but looked white and blonde)

Deena Pilgrim in the Powers TV show was race-bent

Zora in the Powers TV show was race-bent

that's all I have at the moment. hope it helps!

Blink was from the Bahamas!

here's a well-thought out piece

another piece on race-bending that mentions Jason Mamoa

It doesn't relate to race, but one that always strikes me as a particularly interesting controversy (going back quite a few years) is the publication of Miracleman #9. It is a (very) violent series in places, but that never drew anything like the controversy or censure of this issue, which committed the terrible crime of depicting childbirth...
The contrast over which of these, violence or childbirth, is considered offensive strikes me as potentially fertile ground - although I realise you don't really want the violence aspect it might still be of some interest.

Nick Fury is actually an interesting example. I think I read that the Ultimate Nick Fury was consciously based on Samuel L. Jackson, so they must have had films in mind, and then Jackson was really excited to play the character he was obviously based off. Now, most people think of Nick Fury as the MCU/Ultimate character... even to the point that a version of him has joined the 616 universe as Nick Fury, Jr., meaning we now have a biracial Nick Fury in the main line.

I just think that shows the power of these films and the power of casting. People who have no idea what's going on in the comics think of the actors as the standard for the characters, which means it matters so much when we diversify casting. I think people trying to say that casting should stick to the (mostly white) character origins either don't realize the power diverse casting can have... or they completely realize this power and wish to shut it down.

Angela,

As one whom I hope has shown his bona fides in terms of speaking on diversity and representation in comics, I would like to add that there is a third reason, and that is hoping for fidelity to the source material. Personally speaking, whilst I understand and support the idea that comics and the films based on them should more accurately reflect the world around us, I'd prefer for that diversity to occur through either the usage of strong, pre-existing minority characters or the creation of new ones, and not by usurping the heritage of others, a stance that I also take against changes to origins, motivations, behavior, etc. As you so rightly said, non-comics-readers will assume the movies are accurately depicting how these heroes and villains appear in print, so as a student of the medium, I'd much rather hew closer to what has been set down by a character's creators or the vast majority of their history. Perhaps this makes me a "moldy fig" (the term used to denigrate fans of traditional jazz who disliked be-bop), but just as I'd prefer the filmic Johnny Storm to be the one created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, I'm hoping for the Gal Gadot Wonder Woman to strive for peace before brandishing a sword.

Just a thought from an old-timer,
Bob

Awesomely well-worded response (as I would expect from you), and that's sort of the angle I wanted to point as a possible opposing viewpoint, as you do definitely have a point. I think that's a more interesting counter-point than "all heroes should be white blah blah!!"

For my own point of view, I'm a big fan of adaptations and of changes within adaptations. I sort of theme my literature class around that idea: the adaptation says more about our own society than it does about the original text. So Baz Lurmann's Romeo and Juliet is not the best Shakespeare production ever, but it's an interesting and lively adaptation of the play for the 90s, and at least at the time it came to define the play for young people. I still think of Mercutio as Harold Perrineau, by the way. Just as I can read Casino Royale and picture the M in that book as Judi Dench, even though I know Ian Fleming never meant for that character to be a woman.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like to see smart changes made to a character, while the core of the character remain the same. I see race as part of the window-dressing, not part of the core... which I realize is an opinion with problems. For instance, I've read that Peter Parker, a poor teenaged orphan from Queens having to support his aunt with little to no outside help, works just as well, if not better, as race-bent. Particularly since we've gotten two white Peter Parkers in the 21st century, I tend to agree.

Race-bent characters that completely work for me right now is Joe and Iris West. I know literally nothing about them in current iterations of comics, but I do know both characters from the old Silver Age Flash comics. Iris, to me, was sort of a Lois Lane clone... at least at first (I think she gets more personality later on), and Ira West was amusing as the absent-minded scientist who might possibly know who Barry is, but it doesn't go much beyond that. (And let's not forget Iris's real parents from the future whose president was a robot Abraham Lincoln.) In the new show, they change the window-dressing: Joe is a cop and surrogate-father for Barry, and Iris is a young professional grad student and reporter. Oh, and they're black. The show doesn't make a big deal out of that. It's show-casing a possible interracial couple (and I still remember when that was WAY more controversial) with no mention of race. And it works because of the (mostly) smart story-telling. (I have my own Iris issues... the article I wrote in December about superheroes and secret-keeping is still valid with this show).

I guess I went on a while. I just think it's fascinating what people expect in adaptations, and how I kind of have a weird opinion about adaptations in a lot of ways.