Everyone that half way knows me, know that I am not a only a super human hip-hop head but a comic book collector and amateur illustrator. I grew up on the work of Kirby, Frazetta, Kubert etc…. These men created the characters I grew up with….I say all that to say this. As a African American there was never many comic characters of color that were not worthless stereotypes left over from blaxsploitation tropes or tone deaf writers who had no clue of the experience of other ethnicities nor the ambition to rectify the problem. This is what makes Marvels new attempt at diversity kind of troubling to me. I see them taking old mantles and just changing the characters ethnicity rather than creating new characters with some staying power and story of their own. They could even dust off under utilized characters and give them some depth and a story, which is much preferable to a simple switch in ethnicity that will be erased with the next Secret wars level world changing event. I know the new FF movie comes from Fox and Marvel had nothing to do with it, but I guess as a fan and consumer who always wanted characters who looked like him to have staying power and depth this new human torch don’t feel right. It feels forced. Good writing could have introduced a new character and we don’t need another origin story. They could have started in the middle with some team conflict and introduce some new characters as a result. Then the insanity they are doing with Dr. Doom, my favorite villain of all time is….beyond words. As of right now El-p doing the closing credits is the most exciting part of this movie coming out for me. I want to be proven wrong but don’t think I will…check out his work below.
