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

[j9ac9k]

It wasn't pandering; it was an accurate reflection of both the times in which these characters were created and the creators themselves. It's like complaining that Woody Allen was "pandering" to white people with when all he really was doing was reflecting the world that he knew/ knows.

Woody Allen wrote about his culture. Seigel and Shuster had to write about a spaceman because they would not have been allowed to have a Jewish Superman. That's certainly a reflection of the times.

[skyvolt2000]

But why bother to put the work in? If you can gain immediate gratification, from the diversity mob. Plus do it as lazy as possible, slap a tribal tatto on Arthur Curry and retcon away a history that many people love, and that writers before you spent years crafting.
I myself am a creator I thought up Kala, just on the fly... but it could sell, and be a must read book... but you're more likely to see gay interacial Hawk and Dove because its easy and lazy and indulges people who think of that as an achievement point for "Muh diversity". Just do the damn work. Instead of race bending legacies that people are already invested in (but I think sometimes that offending those people is half the fun for them)

It's hard to do that when you have folks who don't want a POC be it new or legacy around in the first place. Be it socalled fans, be it the diversity & comics trolls or even employees of said company.

When some tries to use POC be it legacy or new-the line starts with bytching and complaining by fans and even comic book stores. See McDuffie's JLA run. He attacked NOBODY yet got attacked for a roster DAN created not him.

In some case you get the race change because it FORCES someone to use the dang character.

If left alone would Flash have a black kid running around named Jaleel? NO. So who gets screwed" Wally West fans-because no one wants to do the DAMN work to build up Jaleel-even as troll attack the book.

Then you have Duke-who has done NOTHING in Rebirth. Now make Duke into a Black Tim Drake-guess who suddenly finds usage for him.

The POC who folks WANT to support like Vixen-somehow they can't find anyone who wants to do the gig. If they do-they get little or no support as Cyborg, New Superman, Superwoman & Beetle have shown. Or they get trolled to death by bitter fanbases as Mosaic, Moon Girl and almost all the POC lead solo books get at Marvel.

Doing the damn work is more than tossing out a book and say "be happy". It's putting up an effort, showing real support when trolls attack and willing to use folks.

[skyvolt2000]

It wasn't pandering; it was an accurate reflection of both the times in which these characters were created and the creators themselves. It's like complaining that Woody Allen was "pandering" to white people with when all he really was doing was reflecting the world that he knew/ knows.

Woody Allen was ALLOWED to write about the world he knew.

POC, LGBT & women have NOT for the most part. They had to pander or alternate what they created to appease certain folks.

A black writer wanted to do a story about a black skater-her publisher said "do yall really know how to skate?"

A well know black director wanted to do a movie about a black family-he got told ditch the father and toss them in the ghetto.

Representation in the media has grown by leaps and bounds over the decades and continues to do so but this fact seems completely ignored with crap like the "Oscars so white" controversy

What folks are NOW tired of is the TYPE of representation they are are seeing.

Those offerings you claim weren't good-hard to decided that if your voters won't go see them and it's funny to say these things get judged on diversity versus art. That is the excuse of it only got mentioned or nominated because of race, sex or LGBT.

An argument used by those who never bothered to see the product in question.

Folks want variety in the representation not the fill in the blank check points.

[Lightning Rider]

I think I'm only okay with it if it doesn't drastically change our perception of the character historically, and isn't slapped on with no cultural significance.

For example, Dick Grayson was later written to be part Gypsie. You can be part Roma and still "pass" as caucasian or look ambiguous on the page with varying skin tones and black hair. It doesn't dramatically change his character, but it's also not a shameless slap on that's only done to make him non-white. It fits his background and opens up story potential. Whether it was fulfilled is a different argument.

Rayner on the other hand, while his appearance can certainly qualify as Latino, has no cultural connection to being Mexican. I read someone was happy to read that he was Mexican, which is nice, but plop him in Mexico or with a Mexican family and he'll have no way to relate to them at all because he wasn't raised Mexican and didn't have reason to identify as one until he was an adult. It's essentially useless.

NuWally had the opposite problem. When he was supposed to simply be the DCU's Wally West, he was drastically changing the look of the original for no apparent reason other than to "diversify". And that does a disservice to the existing characters of color. It didn't turn out well for anyone, especially given his stereotypical introduction.

[Outside_85]

About Kyle, I don't think Ron Marz is particularly happy about Judd Winick changing him into a half Mexican.

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By reading that, I think Ron is just ignoring it without really offering any insight on what he feels about it. Saying nothing can after all be that he doesn't care... and if he hated it, he could just have changed it back if DC backed him.

[Tazpocalapse]

I'm okay with it as long as it is well thought out and executed. The thing about D.C. is that they have a MULTIVERSE at their disposal which opens up many possibilities.

[Jim Kelly]

I'm a mutt. I have European ancestry but it stretches all over Europe and into Russia. My father changed his name when he was young to give himself a boring name so he could escape prejudice and he made sure to give all his kids bland names so we wouldn't get picked on in school--but, of course, we got picked on anyway because school kids are evil.

You could reveal to me hundreds of facts about my family tree--connections to people all over the world--and it wouldn't surprise me. Nor would it surprise me to know that all the bland, boring people in the world have diverse family trees. And that was the thing with the classic DC heroes--most of them were made to be bland, with bland names, so they could fit in and not be rejected. But that wouldn't mean they couldn't have all kinds of diverse family trees. Most people in the real world do.

I don't have a problem with Kyle Rayner discovering that he wasn't just Black Irish, but a bunch of other cultures, in his family tree. However, he was an American. Whatevever happened in the past, he himself was an American living a pretty privileged life and not being subject to a lot of prejudice. It's different when you're Rex Mason and you look like a freak--I expect Metamorpho doesn't have an easy life and that's why he always wanted to look like a regular Joe.

[Sodam Yat]

About Kyle, I don't think Ron Marz is particularly happy about Judd Winick changing him into a half Mexican.

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I'm not really surprised on Ron Marz's answer to that question. Writers (not just Ron Marz) seemed to just not reference Judd Winnick's run on Kyle as if it never happened. His ring always comes back to him if someone snatches it, his ring can't be drained and so on. All of these been contradicted post-rebirth.

About Kyle's being half Mexican, that's something else that has been ignored as well. Justin Jordan has pretty much done away with all of that. During his run, Gabriel Vasquez, CIA, spy, etc. never existed at all. All of that was done away with. His father has always referred to as Aaron Rayner and never came off as a Latino descent, because he simply wasn't in New Guardians. He was just a regular guy who worked on cars.

The only writer that I know of who currently seems to reference other writers who retcon characters into being minorities is Tom King.

[Kyer]

In regards to opening post: I'm Hispanic and I find it disrespectful when a character is changed in order to appease some sort of quota. Wally West's situation was a whole other division of awful as it went beyond just ancestory changes.
If the original creator of the character depicted them as blond and blue-eyed for whatever reason at the time...then by golly that they should remain. If comics want to create a bunch of new characters who are everything under the sun (including a talking rabbit) I wish them well.
If the creative team never specified that Susie Q was Polish, then go ahead and decide she's Norwegian. I don't care.
But don't mess with someone else's work just because you want to feel all special and virtuous, DC/Marvel/whomever. Burns my maca buns, that does.

[Dr. Poison]

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?

I don't have a problem with any of these things except when they replaced Kent Nelson with Khalid. I liked Khalid all on his own but I don't like it when existing characters are replaced/killed off just so a minority character can be introduced/featured. I think that hurts both characters in the long run. Instead, I'd rather see DC simply add more minority characters into it's mix such as making the founding members of the Justice League an eight member team instead of seven with Black Lightning or Vixen as the additional member rounding out Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Martian Manhunter. DC has a lot of great non-straight white male characters and I hope we see more of them show up in the current line of books.

[Crazy Diamond]

It depends on how it's done. Hal being revealed to be Jewish never bothered me because it was hinted at in The Spectre when they mentioned his mom being Jewish and his dad being a lasped Catholic. He was also based on Paul Newman so all Tom King did was just come out and say it.

On the other hand, I thought the way the modern Nick Fury was introduced into the main Marvel universe was awkward but the character himself was fine.

Even with Wally, him being biracial wasn't the problem. It was him being deaged and being put into bad stories that hurt that character. I also didn't understand why DC forgot about XS who they could've brought back into the Flash but considering that she's a 90s character and DCs track record with that generation maybe it was for the best.

[C-Dot]

Then what's the point? The character wasn't made with black people in mind, conceived with black people in mind, or even remotely have anything to do with black people. No experience. No outlook from a black man's perspective. Nothing but a race change. To me, that's empty.

In 2017, racechanging being considered "equality" compared to crafting or utilizing black characters makes no sense to me because it's just creating "insta-minorities" instead of actually making something with black people in mind with a consistent reference point (black in comics, black in film, black in movies, etc.). If I go to a tailor and he gives me someone else's suit instead of crafting and creating my own tailor made suit like everyone else, that's "equal"? That people of color have earned the right to play white characters is "diverse" and "representation"? If a younger reader gets into comics and finds out that the one character he wanted to see is white in the past and current comics, that's good?

Are you familiar with August Wilson? "To mount an all-black production of a Death of a Salesman or any other play conceived for white actors as an investigation of the human condition through the specifics of white culture is to deny us our own humanity, our own history, and the need to make our own investigation from the cultural ground on which we stand as black Americans." He was extreme, but he had a point.

I care not for “white tears being shed” (In the words of Roger G. Smith as Huey Newton, “I’m not anti white. I’m anti wrong.”). I care for people’s experiences being reflected in the art.

I'm for original characters, existing characters, and new characters over raceswapping. And I'm also for legacy characters, but just not treated as being inferior to the original hero in story.

Regardless of casting, a character like Batman would still be a character conceived with white people in mind in asthetic and culture. And with original characters of color,you have legacy that starts and ends with the character being conceived with their race and culture in mind. Not as an accessory or from a purely cosmetic standpoint like skin, but a part of the character in the way that my color is a meaningful part of who I am. To take a character and make them "insert color here" just strictly for the skin alone instead of crafting a character from the ground up just feels a bit much. And with the argument of "well, characters of color don't sell so we need to racechange to make them viable", it really comes off patronizing (and false when people forget that "Blade" kicked off the Marvel movies). And if said character is the same regardless of who is playing him or her, then what's the point? It's just odd to not have a reflection of the very people you want to "reach out to" and make a character who would still have that white history connected to it. Now look at that and look at heroes of color who are not white characters racechanged. It's criminal to not have them utilized for "diversity" and have them on the bench.

If Hollywood wants to show me true diversity, they can have a hero with his or her own distinct mark on the world and not a character who is on the shoulders of white people regardless. Create them the same way those white characters are created and give them the same shine and promote on the same level. That to me is showing me that Hollywood actually cares about people of color.

Pretty much.

Long story short, it's kinda lazy.

[Ascended]

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?

Not reading the whole thread, but tossing in my two cents.....

I typically don't have a problem with it, as long as it's not such a drastic change it makes the character completely different or the change becomes the whole focus of the character.

Helena Bertinelli having darker skin is something I am totally fine with. In fact, I never noticed the change until it was pointed out to me. It didn't change her character, it didn't change her history (well, reboot, but you know what I mean) and she still looked the same (except hotter ), and since there are a lot of Italians with darker skin tones, it made sense.

The New52 Wally West is another matter. Had they just (re)introduced Wally as we knew him but as a biracial guy with darker skin and bright red hair (it happens even if its uncommon) I'd have been fine with it. However, they changed everything about him from his hair (IMO a major visual identifier for the character), his age, his experiences, relationships and history....it was a new character on every level except his name. So no, that didn't work for me.

Making Hal Jordan Jewish is a total and complete non-issue. He isn't suddenly acting or dressing or speaking differently, he's not expressing opinions the character historically hasn't. So who cares? This is a change that fits within the parameters of what we know about the character.

Usually I prefer race-bending to race-changing. I hate reboots and retcons with a passion, and making major changes to a character's race, established sexuality, or religion isn't something I usually care for simply because I don't like screwing with the past. But shifting things a little one way or the other? That's something I can accept. You wanna make Wonder Woman's skin tone a little more olive, to represent the ancient peoples and region she came from? Cool.

You want to suddenly make Bruce Wayne gay? I'm not going to accept that as easily because Bruce has a long and well documented history of straight relationships. It's true that people in the real world come out of the closet late in life, and many of them have straight relationships (including marriage and kids) beforehand, but in this particular example it's too much of a change to not feel forced.

On the other hand, I have no problem with Allan Scott being gay; even though he was married (in previous continuity) his wife never seemed like a major part of his character or life (outside of giving him kids) and especially when taking his generation into account, I could easily see him as being among those "late out of the closet" folk. In fact, when the "original" JSA return, I hope this is a development that sticks and we get to see the "real" Allan come out to his family and friends.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

On the other hand, I have no problem with Allan Scott being gay; even though he was married (in previous continuity) his wife never seemed like a major part of his character or life (outside of giving him kids) and especially when taking his generation into account, I could easily see him as being among those "late out of the closet" folk. In fact, when the "original" JSA return, I hope this is a development that sticks and we get to see the "real" Allan come out to his family and friends.

I'm actually of the same mind. His romance and eventual marriages to both Rose & Thorn, then Harlequin weren't exactly love stories for the ages. I really like Alan Scott, but his romantic relationships have never been particularly compelling parts of his character. Given the era he came from, and his generally conservative demeanor, I could absolutely buy the idea that Alan has been a closeted gay man for decades, who has just recently begun to understand who he is. It wouldn't harm the character in the slightest, but would open him up to new stories, particularly in regards to his relationship with his openly gay son Obsidian (assuming Doomsday Clock restores the JSA's children, of course).

[Hizashi]

In regards to opening post: I'm Hispanic and I find it disrespectful when a character is changed in order to appease some sort of quota. Wally West's situation was a whole other division of awful as it went beyond just ancestory changes.
If the original creator of the character depicted them as blond and blue-eyed for whatever reason at the time...then by golly that they should remain. If comics want to create a bunch of new characters who are everything under the sun (including a talking rabbit) I wish them well.
If the creative team never specified that Susie Q was Polish, then go ahead and decide she's Norwegian. I don't care.
But don't mess with someone else's work just because you want to feel all special and virtuous, DC/Marvel/whomever. Burns my maca buns, that does.

Hispanic as well, and I agree with you. I don't need characters to share my skin tone to enjoy their stories, and when people bring up that we don't have all that many minority characters my first thought is: so? If the character is physically vague and an assertion about their ethnicity has never been made, go ahead and assert something.