Minorities in Comics and Other Media, etc

[Malvolio]

Peak cluelessness.

You know, when I first heard about it, I thought "You" was a dumb name for a television series, but it's all worth it when it turns Laura Ingraham into Lou Costello.

[CosmiComic]

I wouldn't focus on the O5 if it were up to me but that's something that the FOX X-Men movies never did even after how many movies over how many years? Disney/Marvel is definitely going to want to set themselves apart from the FOX series. I think they're gonna' have most if not all the O5 characters in their version though, although they'll probably add in other characters like Storm and Wolverine, we'll see.

But the O5 aren't that great so why use them? If the MCU wants to set itself apart, then use more minority mutants from the start. The XCU was also heavily White and male.

The first two Avengers movies were very white and very male, it took the MCU a while before they finally started giving PoC and women characters bigger roles. I honestly don't know how they're going to do the Fantastic Four, but like I said; I won't be surprised if there's some racebending.

I don't even like F4, White or not, so I'll admit my bias, but I honestly have no idea how the MCU will make them work. We can barely get multiple PoC on a team at once and almost no interactions between female superheroes so I don't see the appeal of some all-White, mostly male team now. But the excuse is always 'they're important to Marvel' or whatever

[CSTowle]

The Fantastic Four are a lot like Captain Marvel (the real one, Batson) in that they stagnated decades ago and now the fanbase mistakenly thinks they can't work in today's world, and true fans who write and draw their stories love the old stuff so much that they tend to do their updated versions of old stories/feel than trying to update the franchises. Luckily for Captain Marvel he got a movie that shows how it works in today's world (and turned out better than the Superman movies from Snyder). The Fantastic Four have had two flops so far, and in the comics the few attempts at an update (Hickman and the Future Foundation, for example) work while the writer is on but then revert back as soon as they leave.

The Fantastic Four were the heart and soul of the Marvel Universe for decades. And during the Stan/Kirby run that made people fans of the franchise it was an idea factory. When they said Marvel was "the House of Ideas" the lion's share was coming out of "the world's greatest comic magazine" (got to love Lee's salesmanship). It's why they have a special place in a lot of fan's hearts, and creator's hearts as well, but that love and the inability to focus on continuing in that creative and exploration tradition from Kirby/Lee is what led to the stagnation.

The Giffen then DnA version of the Guardians of the Galaxy shows you can take a handful of generally worthless and forgotten characters and craft a story people care about and that can make a billion at the box office if done well tells me there's absolutely zero chance the Fantastic Four "can't" be successful. Just that they haven't been so far.

[MindofShadow]

I don't even like F4, White or not, so I'll admit my bias, but I honestly have no idea how the MCU will make them work. We can barely get multiple PoC on a team at once and almost no interactions between female superheroes so I don't see the appeal of some all-White, mostly male team now. But the excuse is always 'they're important to Marvel' or whatever

I honestly think they keep trying because it has a catchy name.

100% serious lol

Easy to market if you can make the movie halfway decent.

I think the problem with the F4 is that they keep trying to do Doom at the same time. I think you have to save the dude... he doesn't work if you only have 20 minutes to explain him. He also doesn't really fit into what the F4 does (explore)

Just make the bad guy the Mole people or something. Go hard on the exploration part of it and make the villain tertiary. The CGI would have to be ON POINT to make it worth it though, which Marvle has problems with sometimes.

You can either have them exploring a planet and not wanting to bring the native evil species back (you could lean into horror a bit here, ala Alien or something) or have them exploring deep ocean cave or something. Something you can go ham on the CGI world.

Skip the origin, hit it in quick flashbacks if you have to (PTSD type flashbacks with the spaceship starts rocking too hard or something). Bring more kids from the future foundation if you need ti raise the stakes.

Johnny and ben puch alien bad guys, Reeed is trying to smart guy fix whatever problem is gong on, Sue holds the team together and near the climax, her powers increase to show she is way stronger than the rest of hte team, everyone esapes, yay family lol

[CosmiComic]

The Fantastic Four are a lot like Captain Marvel (the real one, Batson) in that they stagnated decades ago and now the fanbase mistakenly thinks they can't work in today's world, and true fans who write and draw their stories love the old stuff so much that they tend to do their updated versions of old stories/feel than trying to update the franchises. Luckily for Captain Marvel he got a movie that shows how it works in today's world (and turned out better than the Superman movies from Snyder). The Fantastic Four have had two flops so far, and in the comics the few attempts at an update (Hickman and the Future Foundation, for example) work while the writer is on but then revert back as soon as they leave.

The Fantastic Four were the heart and soul of the Marvel Universe for decades. And during the Stan/Kirby run that made people fans of the franchise it was an idea factory. When they said Marvel was "the House of Ideas" the lion's share was coming out of "the world's greatest comic magazine" (got to love Lee's salesmanship). It's why they have a special place in a lot of fan's hearts, and creator's hearts as well, but that love and the inability to focus on continuing in that creative and exploration tradition from Kirby/Lee is what led to the stagnation.

The Giffen then DnA version of the Guardians of the Galaxy shows you can take a handful of generally worthless and forgotten characters and craft a story people care about and that can make a billion at the box office if done well tells me there's absolutely zero chance the Fantastic Four "can't" be successful. Just that they haven't been so far.

The problem is them being 'the heart and soul' when all the other groups actually grown and evolve, and incorporate new diverse heroes instead of the same four White guys. Why do they keep getting chances when lots of minority heroes get ignored and dropped and underdeveloped?

I honestly think they keep trying because it has a catchy name.

100% serious lol

Easy to market if you can make the movie halfway decent.

I think the problem with the F4 is that they keep trying to do Doom at the same time. I think you have to save the dude... he doesn't work if you only have 20 minutes to explain him. He also doesn't really fit into what the F4 does (explore)

Just make the bad guy the Mole people or something. Go hard on the exploration part of it and make the villain tertiary. The CGI would have to be ON POINT to make it worth it though, which Marvle has problems with sometimes.

You can either have them exploring a planet and not wanting to bring the native evil species back (you could lean into horror a bit here, ala Alien or something) or have them exploring deep ocean cave or something. Something you can go ham on the CGI world.

Skip the origin, hit it in quick flashbacks if you have to (PTSD type flashbacks with the spaceship starts rocking too hard or something). Bring more kids from the future foundation if you need ti raise the stakes.

Johnny and ben puch alien bad guys, Reeed is trying to smart guy fix whatever problem is gong on, Sue holds the team together and near the climax, her powers increase to show she is way stronger than the rest of hte team, everyone esapes, yay family lol

Not a terrible idea. But it doesn't really fix the characters, especially Sue Storm, easily one of the least interesting MU heroes IMO.

[godisawesome]

I’d have Doom actually introduced before the F4, and establish his cred as a powerful villain who rarely cares about other heroes because they’re not Richards, cast a great actor of Romani descent in the role, and have the F4 be people he thought he’d taken care of and got his revenge on by sabotaging their experimental space shuttle to oversee a radioactive Space event back in the 60’s…

…Then have their shuttle miraculously make its way back because if Reed and Sue science-ing the $#!+ out of it while Johnny piloted and Ben (who I’d maybe make a Yaphett Kotto type of Jewish black man) was exposed to greater radiation repairing it. Doom then gets violently angered by their return, and stops being slippery and comes straight for them.

Doom, to be honest, is the real prize to me, followed by Ben and Johnny. Reed and Sue are both my least interesting ones.

[CosmiComic]

I'd rather not have them be from the 60s.

As for the characters, I'd prefer they skip ahead to the kids. I think they have more potential.

[CSTowle]

The problem is them being 'the heart and soul' when all the other groups actually grown and evolve, and incorporate new diverse heroes instead of the same four White guys. Why do they keep getting chances when lots of minority heroes get ignored and dropped and underdeveloped?



Not a terrible idea. But it doesn't really fix the characters, especially Sue Storm, easily one of the least interesting MU heroes IMO.

Because as I said before they were the idea factory for the company for a decade, which was the formative decade of the universe, and were the baby/crown jewel of the Lee/Kirby team. Like Iron Man, Daredevil, even the Hulk they have had bad sales numbers at times. But they still sell enough books to continue justifying their place in the company (aside from when Disney is trying to kill an IP they don't own fully).

Other more diverse characters have had plenty of chances but (like most new white characters) unless they're either heavily tied to or are replacing an established hero it's hard to get comic fans to try something new. Short of putting Alan Moore or an artist who is a draw on a character like Rage, Night Thrasher, Nightwatch, even Blade they're just fringe characters and are as likely to sell books as Speedball or the Black Knight.

The good news is the MCU is not comics. You can throw out any lame fringe character and if it has Disney money behind it the eyeballs will come and the toys will sell. See Shang Chi and the Eternals. Hell, see the Guardians of the Galaxy. Great comic, poor sales. Not most folks choice to head up a franchise you'd invest 10s of millions of dollars into, yet they did and now every Disney hero movie is a Guardians clone. So if they want to push a boring but non-white character like the Blue Marvel or Ironheart then they just do it. Or, like Kang or the Eternals, turn established characters that don't have much of a rabid fanbase already into a nonwhite hero/villain.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

The X-men would help bolster the minority roster. They got a ton of them you could use/build up.

[MindofShadow]

The X-men would help bolster the minority roster. They got a ton of them you could use/build up.

They didn't pay billions to use the Z list minority ones though lol.

you'll get storm, and a race bend most likely.

[Overhazard]

They didn't pay billions to use the Z list minority ones though lol.

you'll get storm, and a race bend most likely.

They'll probably throw in Jubilee and they might find another British Asian woman to play Psylocke, just avoid the whole bodyswap thing, have her be adopted or a half sibling so the scumbags won't come out of the woodwork pretending to care about Captain Britain. Though I can't see them having more telepaths other than Jean, Professor X, and Emma Frost. The X-Verse is lousy with telepaths, can't think about swinging a dead cat without hitting one.

Maybe even Monet if they're feeling generous.

[babyblob]

They didn't pay billions to use the Z list minority ones though lol.

you'll get storm, and a race bend most likely.

Forge and Bishop also if they are feeling Frisky. I can see them Race bending Gambit. I have heard that rumor before.

[MindofShadow]

Forge and Bishop also if they are feeling Frisky. I can see them Race bending Gambit. I have heard that rumor before.

Gambit and/or Rogue are prime candidates to be sure.

I don't want Bishop on the main team, if they do Bishop, I want to see his time traveling story.

Bishop should get his own show.

[Vic Vega]

They let Kyle Rittenhouse walk.

Non guilty of all charges. They even dropped the charge for violating curfew.

[Surf]

They didn't pay billions to use the Z list minority ones though lol.

you'll get storm, and a race bend most likely.

That's the rub though, even to your earlier question. The catch-22 with the poc characters is just that- Outside of about a roster of about 10, combined per the big 2- THEY ARE ALL 'Z LIST'. Even the term 'racebend' doesn't take things into account that should be imo. Now that the IP for all this 'kids fare' is becoming bankable (another argument), working actors are needed to play these supporting and starring roles but these same characters are marginalized WAY more than the current populace accounts for so what do you do? I can tell you it's worked out more often than not and that's the comic dork side of me speaking. For example we've had 3 live action Wilson Fisk AKA Kingpin of Crime and for what it's worth the one with the late great Michael Clarke Duncan wasn't the worst one by a longshot.

Didn't Tom Holland say something to the effect that if he's still playing Spider-Man at 30 somethings wrong? YEA, Tom Holland, that's the problem. I'm not a Spider-Man stan, but the character's been a thing to me since the 80's and that Spider-Man was fucking 30 years old! But that's not who they want to make the movies about. I'm on a comic book board so I know there are tons of readers of that character who've been rocking with him for decades and they don't go back anywhere near as far back as the 1960's when he was a kid, or even when they rebooted him and made him back to a kid. So many of the seminal Spider-Man stories involved him as an adult but that's not what the bank-ability/familiarity equation the corporate suits consider.

Ya man's is gonna make a FANTASTIC Kang once that gets going btw.

Comic properties that just happen to be brothas, or sistas, or POC, on the strength? Only the ones that rate are gonna get a shot and clearly, the fuckin' Peacemaker is ahead in line of that group or a host of 'commons' or Z-listers, or even the cats like Blade that are gonna have to get back in the line cause now they've moved into reboot status. Establishing familiarity with these characters is a non-starter cause it doesn't even matter anymore. Sam Jackson's Fury was the future and best to embrace it. All the beloved white characters punching people through walls shouldn't get to double-dip on TV and movies as it were and thankfully in large part, they don't. And their not going away either. There's always gonna be a place for dull-ass Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben, solving the same problem, the same way, over and over again. And no I don't consider Ben to be a brotha.