I hate when people have to add that little footnote 'in the MCU'. DC will never be able to replicate that, because DC is NOT the MCU. Only the MCU is MCU and apparently that's all that really matters. Black Panther was never the first black lead show... or the first Black led superhero.... There have been others. Just off the top of my head, I remember Blade, 2, 3, Spawn, Steel, Catwoman.... Some where good... some were utter garbage, but 'black led' wasn't an issue till the MCU started a combined universe.
Honestly, I liked Blade a lot better than Black Panther. I found that movie really boring. The way he had to fight to get his super powers... and then loses his super powers... and has to get his super powers back... after he already appeared in Civil War WITH his super powers... It just got redundant and made 'The Black Panther' seem like a switch that gets turned on and off all the time.
Frankly it was lot like Dark Knight Rises... which i hated. It should have been called 'The dark knight rises two or three times then quits'.
For me, that's a much better way to do it though. The men started out as ADULTS. They've got their training, they've go their hard worked for degrees. They may have even been the smartest people in their schools when they were kids, but they didnt' break into einsteins garage and fix his equations. There is at least an implied backstory of hard work and training to get to where they are. They just didn't get any major breakthrough or inevitable lab accident that made them full fledged 'heroes'. Until they have that instigating incident... they really are 'background specialists that would show up when needed.' Adults can get away with that... Genius children are a lot tougher to accept.
I disagree. 90% of a character is entirely based on the stories they are in. If the stories they are in suck, and the characters are out of character, and the plot doesn't make any sense... why would you NOT hate that character? It's not about the race, the gender, the politics or anything else.... it's literally because the writer didn't write a good story. That seems competely legit to me.
Someone mentioned John Henry irons above. By contrast... i loved his early appearances. collected all his reign of Superman stuff and probably a year or so of his solo. The difference is the origin. He was also a genius inventor who had a complicated backstory of how he was able to build his armor... including degrees in engineering, but he didn't have any connection to Superman at all. He didn't get his blessing, he didn't wear his costume or use his gear... He wore the symbol because superman was dead and he wanted to do some good to pay him back. There was nothing about this that was out of character for Superman, he was out of the equation. Had RiRi been more like that? Designing her own suit and having zero contact with Tony or Stark enterprises... and actually an adult genius, I would have found her much better. But as it is? yeah, hated that character from first story.