Do you have a problem with retroactive diversity for DC's heroes?

[El_Gato]

By the way, as a non-American, please pardon my super duper ignorance but is Hispanic actually a race? Doesn't hispanic just refer to people of Spanish descent, be they white, black, Asian or even, I would assume, Sephardic Jews? Am I missing something here?

It's incredibly complicated. Lol A big part of that has to do with the fact the USA has never been good at classifying or identifying multiracial people. Somone who is mixed White/Black is just Black, someone who is mixed White/Native is just White unless they still practice the Native culture...etc.

Latin America has a long history of miscegenation since the Spanish/Hispanics first stepped foot on this side of the world. So some Latinos are Mestizos, some are Native, some are White, some are Black, and some are all three. Hence all the confusion. I'm very curious to see how the 2020 US Census goes, since the last one (2010) was shrouded in controversy when it came to identifying Latinos and Arabs/Middle Eastern people.

[skyvolt2000]

Y'see here's where I'm getting caught up... when did being Mexican suddenly become more interesting than being a spy?

The spy part will always be important.

The ISSUE is when that spy is not a straight white male and now everybody got an issue with it.

James Bond's movies with ALL their flaws can be overlooked by some because the lead is white.

Black Widow gets a movie and EVERY flaw is pointed out. Yet will still get some support as Nikita proved.

A black guy? If it's the Famous Jett Jackson and it's a show in show-no issue.

Famous Jett Jackson for REAL? EVERY flaw is pointed out and World War 3 over why he was chosen. Story be DAMN. The above two flop-the leads are not blamed-except is certain cases. THe last one-it will forever be the fault of the lead even if the studio ADMITS they bleep up everything.

[Badou]

In comics I'm generally against it I think. I mean in the cases of Dick Grayson or Kyle Rayner I don't mind as it doesn't really change anything about the character. They still remain basically who they have always been from appearance to personality and how they act. In the cases of Alan Scott or Wally West in the New 52 what they did with them I am against it. I don't like those kind of retcons. Basically doing something like completely race swapping a character in comics that has decades and decades of history as being a certain way, especially just to match some CW TV show version, is awful storytelling. I'm completely against it. Create new characters if you want a specific character to look or act a certain way that would go against established continuity in the main universe.

As for other media adaptations, or elseworld stories, I don't mind it. They can race swap the the character like they did with Aquaman in the DCEU and I think it is fine. I can separate the main continuity and characters from other versions and I don't mind if they want to experiment with different things, especially in live action as I know those adaptations have the biggest audience.

[KurtW95]

For years, DC made an effort to introduce legacy characters that were not simply more straight white American men. Mr. Terrific and Blue Beetle are two of the more successful additions. The Dr. Fate established during the New 52 was an Egyptian-American medical student named Khalid Nassour.
However, DC has also retroactively changed the ethnicity of older characters to give them more diverse backgrounds.

Kyle Rayner was originally a black haired white guy of Irish decent. His surname, Rayner, means "warrior" in some old Irish dialect if I am remembering right. After Ron Marz had moved on and Judd Winnick came on board, he finally resolved the dangling plotline of Kyle's long lost father, who Marz had established as a spy. Winnick, who had always assumed Kyle was latino because of his black hair, established that Kyle's father was a Mexican-American CIA agent named Gabriel Vasquez and that "Aaron Rayner" was merely an alias. More recently, it had been established that Hal Jordan's mother is Jewish, which makes Hal a Jew because it is passed down on the mother's side. I, on the other hand, am not Jewish because my father is a Jew, but my mother is not. The Nazis would have tried to kill us all regardless, but I digress.

Do any fans have a problem with this kind of retroactive ethnic diversification or do you find it pandering? Would you be upset if Iris West was now depicted as being of mixed ethnicity like she is in TV & movies? Or if Lois Lane's mother were to be revealed as being Vietnamese? Or Aquaman's father was revealed to be of Polynesian decent?

Personally, I don't necessarily have a problem with any of this. It doesn't fundamentally change who the characters are, but opens them up to new storytelling possibilities and audiences that previously might not have been interested.

What do you think?

Yes. It's beyond dumb.

[Citizen Kane]

As long as they're not drastically changing a well-established character's style or personality, changes are fine.

[HandofPrometheus]

I rather see established diverse characters over race-bended characters. Movies and T.V shows are going to change races regardless so that's a losing battle but honestly it looks dumb. Type in deadshot in Google you get will Smith version but all the other versions are white. Same thing for Wally West and other characters. It looks embarrassing imo.

My favorite example of diversity is Aqualad taking over from Tempest, Cassandra from Barbara, Jaime from Ted etc. Legacies basically.

[Midnight_v]

As long as they're not drastically changing a well-established character's style or personality, changes are fine.

I feel the opposite I think the intent there is not fine.
Even though I'm black I would like definitely sideways if suddenly, Wonder woman was a black person or, a dark skin person from the Amazon. It wears me out when I see the wizard Shazam as an aborigine, and I lived in Australia for a number of years.
The problem with it is that the changes are needless, unless, someone has decided that it's not okay for these characters to be white anymore.
Maybe it was just growing up fighting against actual racism that makes me feel this way, but I look at it like the same thing.
If tomorrow I woke up and they made Wolverine Black or a woman or Chinese or Jewish or LGBT, or they do the same thing to Batman or Lobo (visually). That's jarring. Further, someone, somewhere decided "changing this character to make him more diverse is more important that anything else. I know whats best for the audience even if theyre not enlightened. So... immediately not supporting that type of arrogant ideologue.
Finally... my skin color, my ethnicity, be I black American, micronesian, Aboriginal, black Hispanic, from guangzhou in china... its not a coat of paint. Its not something you just slap on a character that has zero cultural capitol established ans say "aahhh diversity", but just the kyle rayner story alone shows that they feel it is... or that people are stupid. So yeah, I have a problem with it in multiple levels, but ultimately its because in my heart I know its wrong.

[Mar-Vell]

I feel the opposite I think the intent there is not fine.
Even though I'm black I would like definitely sideways if suddenly, Wonder woman was a black person or, a dark skin person from the Amazon. It wears me out when I see the wizard Shazam as an aborigine, and I lived in Australia for a number of years.
The problem with it is that the changes are needless, unless, someone has decided that it's not okay for these characters to be white anymore.
Maybe it was just growing up fighting against actual racism that makes me feel this way, but I look at it like the same thing.
If tomorrow I woke up and they made Wolverine Black or a woman or Chinese or Jewish or LGBT, or they do the same thing to Batman or Lobo (visually). That's jarring. Further, someone, somewhere decided "changing this character to make him more diverse is more important that anything else. I know whats best for the audience even if theyre not enlightened. So... immediately not supporting that type of arrogant ideologue.
Finally... my skin color, my ethnicity, be I black American, micronesian, Aboriginal, black Hispanic, from guangzhou in china... its not a coat of paint. Its not something you just slap on a character that has zero cultural capitol established ans say "aahhh diversity", but just the kyle rayner story alone shows that they feel it is... or that people are stupid. So yeah, I have a problem with it in multiple levels, but ultimately its because in my heart I know its wrong.

Thank you sir for the most level headed, intelligent, and truthful post on this thread.

[KurtW95]

I feel the opposite I think the intent there is not fine.
Even though I'm black I would like definitely sideways if suddenly, Wonder woman was a black person or, a dark skin person from the Amazon. It wears me out when I see the wizard Shazam as an aborigine, and I lived in Australia for a number of years.
The problem with it is that the changes are needless, unless, someone has decided that it's not okay for these characters to be white anymore.
Maybe it was just growing up fighting against actual racism that makes me feel this way, but I look at it like the same thing.
If tomorrow I woke up and they made Wolverine Black or a woman or Chinese or Jewish or LGBT, or they do the same thing to Batman or Lobo (visually). That's jarring. Further, someone, somewhere decided "changing this character to make him more diverse is more important that anything else. I know whats best for the audience even if theyre not enlightened. So... immediately not supporting that type of arrogant ideologue.
Finally... my skin color, my ethnicity, be I black American, micronesian, Aboriginal, black Hispanic, from guangzhou in china... its not a coat of paint. Its not something you just slap on a character that has zero cultural capitol established ans say "aahhh diversity", but just the kyle rayner story alone shows that they feel it is... or that people are stupid. So yeah, I have a problem with it in multiple levels, but ultimately its because in my heart I know its wrong.

Well said.

[Ilan Preskovsky]

In comics I'm generally against it I think. I mean in the cases of Dick Grayson or Kyle Rayner I don't mind as it doesn't really change anything about the character. They still remain basically who they have always been from appearance to personality and how they act. In the cases of Alan Scott or Wally West in the New 52 what they did with them I am against it. I don't like those kind of retcons. Basically doing something like completely race swapping a character in comics that has decades and decades of history as being a certain way, especially just to match some CW TV show version, is awful storytelling. I'm completely against it. Create new characters if you want a specific character to look or act a certain way that would go against established continuity in the main universe.

As for other media adaptations, or elseworld stories, I don't mind it. They can race swap the the character like they did with Aquaman in the DCEU and I think it is fine. I can separate the main continuity and characters from other versions and I don't mind if they want to experiment with different things, especially in live action as I know those adaptations have the biggest audience.

Yeah, I largely agree with the latter point. I'm totally against it in comics but it's significantly less of a problem when moving to other media. On the other hand, though, I do prefer for the actors cast to have a resemblance to the comics, especially if the character in question has a very iconic look. I don't have much of a problem, therefore, with Iris West being black in the Flash TV show, whereas a black Superman would be too jarring to work for me.

I feel the opposite I think the intent there is not fine.
Even though I'm black I would like definitely sideways if suddenly, Wonder woman was a black person or, a dark skin person from the Amazon. It wears me out when I see the wizard Shazam as an aborigine, and I lived in Australia for a number of years.
The problem with it is that the changes are needless, unless, someone has decided that it's not okay for these characters to be white anymore.
Maybe it was just growing up fighting against actual racism that makes me feel this way, but I look at it like the same thing.
If tomorrow I woke up and they made Wolverine Black or a woman or Chinese or Jewish or LGBT, or they do the same thing to Batman or Lobo (visually). That's jarring. Further, someone, somewhere decided "changing this character to make him more diverse is more important that anything else. I know whats best for the audience even if theyre not enlightened. So... immediately not supporting that type of arrogant ideologue.
Finally... my skin color, my ethnicity, be I black American, micronesian, Aboriginal, black Hispanic, from guangzhou in china... its not a coat of paint. Its not something you just slap on a character that has zero cultural capitol established ans say "aahhh diversity", but just the kyle rayner story alone shows that they feel it is... or that people are stupid. So yeah, I have a problem with it in multiple levels, but ultimately its because in my heart I know its wrong.

Very well said. Especially your point of it not being "a coat of paint". I've long felt that this sort of race-swapping just comes across as massively offensive especially to the people they're trying to appeal to. Your's may only be one opinion but it does make sense to me. I can't imagine that a few years down the line any of us are going to look back at this sort of thing as anything but a terribly ill judged trend.

[DanseMacabre]

However, DC has also retroactively changed the ethnicity of older characters to give them more diverse backgrounds.

Do any fans have a problem with this kind of retroactive ethnic diversification or do you find it pandering? Would you be upset if Iris West was now depicted as being of mixed ethnicity like she is in TV & movies? Or if Lois Lane's mother were to be revealed as being Vietnamese? Or Aquaman's father was revealed to be of Polynesian decent?

Personally, I don't necessarily have a problem with any of this. It doesn't fundamentally change who the characters are, but opens them up to new storytelling possibilities and audiences that previously might not have been interested.

What do you think?

I do have a problem with this. I'm a minority, but having established characters reveal that they're half asian, black, etc. doesn't sit well with me. If creators feel that is one way to reflect a more diverse society then I vehemently disagree with them. In my eyes it pandering. I always say if they want to create a more diverse universe, create new characters.

[Ilan Preskovsky]

It's incredibly complicated. Lol A big part of that has to do with the fact the USA has never been good at classifying or identifying multiracial people. Somone who is mixed White/Black is just Black, someone who is mixed White/Native is just White unless they still practice the Native culture...etc.

Latin America has a long history of miscegenation since the Spanish/Hispanics first stepped foot on this side of the world. So some Latinos are Mestizos, some are Native, some are White, some are Black, and some are all three. Hence all the confusion. I'm very curious to see how the 2020 US Census goes, since the last one (2010) was shrouded in controversy when it came to identifying Latinos and Arabs/Middle Eastern people.

It's interesting, under Apartheid, people who were mixed raced - in terms of white/ black, specifically - were actually treated as an entirely different category, called "coloured" and that distinction has actually persisted to this day in South Africa. There were major differences between coloured and black people during Apartheid, both in terms of how they saw themselves and how the government did - though, of course, both were still treated as significantly "less" than whites. Trevor Noah, therefore, is considered to be "coloured" in South Africa, rather than black and Obama probably would be too if not for just how pervasive the whole "first black president" thing was on the public consciousness throughout the world.

It really is quite strange. It becomes all the more wonky when you take into consideration something like my Jewishness. South Africa and the USA both lump all ashkenazi Jews like myself as "white", which is all very well and good until you realize that White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis and generally anyone who places one race above another certainly don't see us that way at all.

[El_Gato]

I do have a problem with this. I'm a minority, but having established characters reveal that they're half asian, black, etc. doesn't sit well with me. If creators feel that is one way to reflect a more diverse society then I vehemently disagree with them. In my eyes it pandering. I always say if they want to create a more diverse universe, create new characters.

I agree with you. However they do indeed create new characters and still get accused of pandering. I dread reading the comments section when the likes of Immortal Men, Silencer and Sideways are released.

[Jim Kelly]

In terms of the Kyle Rayner thing, I can appreciate what was going on there. In the first place, they decided that Hal Jordan was old hat, so they needed to stir things up and they introduced this new character as Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner. And a lot of fans were mad about that because, not only did they turn Hal evil and replace him, but the guy they replaced him with was another generic, white dude. Like, they had all these other options--there was other Green Lanterns already around, one of them African-American--and instead of respecting any of that, they just did the lazy thing.

So, I think some people at DC, even if they would never admit it, realized that they were kind of idiotic for doing that. There must have been some office discussions, where they realized, yeah, that was pretty dumb. We didn't have to be so predictable, we should have been open to other possibilities.

And to make up for their lapse in judgement, they tried to cover up their mistake by saying oh, you know, this character was always diverse. Forget alll that other stuff before, we really meant this guy to be Hispanic, because look, he has black hair. So there's your proof right there. You see we really were shaking things up with Kyle Rayner. Now get off our backs.

[ed2962]

It just depends on how it's done.