Why haven't any of the Black Male X-men caught on other than Bishop?

[PrezValentine]

I wonder if some of this is to do with the age we're now living in. I was a teenager in 1975 (I know, ancient) and remember being completely blown away by the All New All Different team, but that wasn't because of diversity, it was because it was bloody well written (and drawn). I found it interesting at the time how those characters grew over the first few years (remember it was bi monthly for quite a while too), they weren't overused they became popular naturally. There wasn't consistent overuse, a character like Wolverine was just gradually expanded on by being very sympathetically written over a decent period of time. Would anyone have been trying to make him become his own sub genre? I certainly don't think so, it was just that he was well written by a really good writer.

There is no reason other character can't be written like that, however, are modern comics fans prepared to put up with the wait for a character to naturally make the steps from relative obscurity to super stardom? It seems to me the need for a push on characters is not quite right, there's a need for them to be written properly and expanded on naturally. But in my view pushing them too hard can result in a break, and helps nether the character or his/her fans.

The wait time is a good point. I'm not sure if people would have the patience for the build-up that takes to actually establish a character in such a medium.

[OWL45]

Sunspot had some really great development in the Avengers but hasn’t been used lately. He is one of my favorites and has a power set that if really utilized to its full potential would make him very formidable.

[Snoop Dogg]

Remembers me of a discussion in Busiek and Perez's Avengers, where Duane Freeman, the liaison government agent assigned to the Avengers ask them if they unconsciously select for their white members first. It's a good run about the peception of heroes and the power of opinion.

That story should be required reading for every writer, editor, and fan of superhero teams. It's the most godlike part of Busiek's run.

[Big Joe]

The wait time is a good point. I'm not sure if people would have the patience for the build-up that takes to actually establish a character in such a medium.

And the other point is, are a company like Marvel prepared to invest time in growing characters sympathetically in the way they did years ago? Or is it easier for them to stick with the status quo? These are possible reasons why there are not so many new introductions of any type in the headline X-Men books. I think there is pressure, obviously, to keep sales high on the main X-books so there has to be some of that line of thinking.

It has been proven possible in recent times, though, to introduce new ideas with all the members of the Champions being very interesting examples. In fairness there have been parts of that series I have really enjoyed. I guess some of those characters were given too big a push too early and had to be settled back a little, but further development will surely mean most of them could hold their own in a well written solo series. That being the case, there should be nothing stopping the decent use of characters in team books.

[BishopsJuice91]

I don’t think there’s one clear answer but rather a few answers to that question. First of all they didn’t know what to do with Bishop until recently after what they did to him in messiah complex, so there’s that, he unlike most of the list has the advantage of coming to during the franchises heyday and the popular cartoon and he was still handled poorly. Comic reader demographic is diverse, the creators are not, that simple. I hope Gentle continues to get pushed and Darwin should be getting used, awesome character not because black just cool characters. Judging from the way the X-Men landscape is looking, the x-office wants to focus on the same main group of X-Men, O5, ANAD, and 90s babies oh and Wolverine off shots and that’s it.

[mogwen]

Yes, it's a great story the part on quotas is just plain brilliant, where Duane Freeman after his rant about color selection in the Avengers (which is a valid point!) rejoices over the fact that there's still one mutant member but not more! Priceless!

[Midnight_v]

It is a pretty simple question, Why haven't any of Black Male X-men caught on other than Bishop? For other minority groups characters say like Asian male the answer is simple they are that many of them( Thunderbird 2nd,Indra,Sunfire?) but other day I was looking up characters they are quite bit of Black male X-characters. Here is the quick list

Sunspot
*Manifold
Prodigy
Gentle
Synch
Darwin
Maggot
Triage
Genesis
Radius
Beldam
Tag
Anarchist
Spike


I mean the obvious answer is going to come up but I am looking more along the lines of design and impact I guess. So maybe the question is better phrased as which character when introduced did you think this character is going to be the next great X-men character?

* Manifold yes I realize he was never in thing X-men related but he trained with Gateway and he is mutant.

Well are you going to say the obvious answer?

I believe:
1/3 of them are ugly as in "perversion of form" or "I wouldn't trade my real life for that, power-set"
1/3 of them are Zany... "Rainbow color spectrum field with with a burger king colored suit, and generic bald black guy look", and "My power is my that my sweat is acid", "Oh, my intestines are sentient war machines."
Even the power to heal... while cool, isn't exactly the superhuman lottery imho (my opinion, I don't want to hear about how awesome it is, I know I'd just rather be phoenix, thanks)

The rest have never been on the UNCANNY X-TEAM, they've been on derivative x-groups but.... it doesn't have the same reach.
.................................

Then there is Robert.

Sunspot is black.

Some might argue, "bi-racial" but every effort to disassociate him from the black struggle because he's brazilian, should immediately cause you to raise an eye at that person.
Thats NOT the one drop rule at play, its his first appearance that ensconced him as such, SO much and SOOO HARD that he actyally managed to stay darkskinned for decades *success*
but the reason he's SO important is the Brazilian governments actions in the Favela the past years.

The afro-brazillians have been dealing with a genocide for a few years now and erasure of the sunspots dark skin is SUPER in line with that issue.

https://www.google.com/search?q=afro...=1920&bih=1007
^ Just to save the you the research at least check out the titles^

Sunspot should be the leader of the X-men. Period.
Trained by Cable. Trained by Gideon. Brought into the hellfire club. Brought onto the Avengers. Bought A.I.M. Raised at the foot of Xaviers dream.

He's Superman, or Hyperion level, the older he gets the more powerful he becomes which is likely why the externals sought him out for sooo long.... before some writer decided that. "Oops it should be cannonball that lives forever, and goes on to lead the struggle." Even the whole Reignfire thing was him, or at least based of his genetics.

Sunspot has caught on and if there weren't ALREADY plans for Cyclops to come back you could literally have the X-men be lead by a "BLACK MALE", but think... since he's masculine, straight, and dark skinned... he is far to great a threat to the "Status Quo" of the X-men. Jesus, what if Jean kisses HIM? Or maddy or Rachel, or manic pixie X-girl.
The effects of the utter and absolute fear of black male hetero-sexuality cannot be understated in the american diaspora. So I'm shipping him with Illyana. . .

Sunspot, Illyana, Madrox. A.I.M 2019


More seriously thought.... If they can't give us an Uncanny X-title or X-men... Lead by Sunspot in 2019 after all the other things he's done this last few years? Its because they don't want, what you want in their books. -M_v

[Sutekh]

After his appearance in Deadpool 2 and rumored appearance in the upcoming X-Force, I'm kind of hoping that Jesse Bedlam is going to get another shot, the way Domino has.

Bedlam, Genesis and Sunspot would be my top choices to see more of, from the OPs list, although I'd add Windshear to that list.

[jalsrix]

You're welcome


"Indians" or "indigenous" is the generic term inherited from the colonizers. There are obviously specific names for the remaining tribes. I'm kind of ashamed that I don't know the names of the tribes my maternal grandpa and paternal grandma come from, since they likely don't remember. Most of them live close to Amazonia.

Oh, so it's the same with North America where they call them Amerindian or 'Red' Indian.

I am bit confused on the term Latino, are they mix European-Amerindian or mixed European-African?

[Midnight_v]

After his appearance in Deadpool 2 and rumored appearance in the upcoming X-Force, I'm kind of hoping that Jesse Bedlam is going to get another shot, the way Domino has.

Bedlam, Genesis and Sunspot would be my top choices to see more of, from the OPs list, although I'd add Windshear to that list.

...Isn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_(Marvel_Comics) white? Or are we talking about kid apocalypse here?

[Triniking1234]

...Isn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_(Marvel_Comics) white? Or are we talking about kid apocalypse here?

Genesis is a clone of Apocalypse so they're playing the "he's black" card.

EDIT: I forgot about that character.

[Goddess]

Oh, so it's the same with North America where they call them Amerindian or 'Red' Indian.

I am bit confused on the term Latino, are they mix European-Amerindian or mixed European-African?

Latinos are descendents of Latin America; it has nothing to do with race as you can be a black Latino, white Latino, mixed Latino, etc.

Not all Latinos are Hispanic; not all Hispanics are Latino.

Also, being Black and being African aren't the same thing. A black American isn't African unless they're from Africa or has immediate ancestry from the continent and its many countries. Just like not all whites are European.

Also, Dravidians are the result of slave trade in Asia. Little known history fact which gets swept under the rug.

On topic, it boils down to the writer. I wish other characters of colour like M, Frenzy or Idie were featured as much as Storm (especially considering Storm's flat personality in recent years). Most writers want to use the core cast which is pretty much the 1991 era teams with the occasional weird modern choice like Glob.

If a prominent writer wanted to tell a story with more characters of colour, they would use them.

[Silver Fang]

Latinos are descendents of Latin America; it has nothing to do with race as you can be a black Latino, white Latino, mixed Latino, etc.

Not all Latinos are Hispanic; not all Hispanics are Latino.

Also, being Black and being African aren't the same thing. A black American isn't African unless they're from Africa or has immediate ancestry from the continent and its many countries. Just like not all whites are European.

Also, Dravidians are the result of slave trade in Asia. Little known history fact which gets swept under the rug.

On topic, it boils down to the writer. I wish other characters of colour like M, Frenzy or Idie were featured as much as Storm (especially considering Storm's flat personality in recent years). Most writers want to use the core cast which is pretty much the 1991 era teams with the occasional weird modern choice like Glob.

If a prominent writer wanted to tell a story with more characters of colour, they would use them.

It's especially annoying when Glob & Mojo seem to be EVERYWHERE these days, yet Monet has been back & forth to limbo and thrown in as an afterthought with the 2 books she was in. She was in Generation X, but treated as a low priority. Then she went to Weapon X where she was mis-characterized & served no purpose.

Hell, I think Mojo was in Mr. & Mrs. X. And he & Glob have been advertised & chosen for Uncanny before Monet or Sunspot. If they're gonna try to have Mojo be a major villain, they could stand to be pushing some other X-characters. lol

[Crimz]

I think there's way too many major issues for us to be talking about individual things like powersets and characters designs. Let's just take a look at the main line-ups in the last two big X-relaunches:

X-Men Gold: rehash of the Claremont line-up post-DPS. No characters created after the 80's.
X-Men Blue: the original X-Men + two Wolverine and Storm stand-ins
X-Men Red: oh hey! an actual original line-up with diverse characters from various decades.
Weapon X: Wolverine-adjacent characters + Warpath and Domino. No characters created after the 90's.
Uncanny X-Men: seems new at first but essentially we have the main players from the 90's Blue/Gold line-ups (with Laura as a Wolverine stand-in) + Polaris and Northstar thrown for some background page action. Only characters created after the 90's are the X-kids.
X-Force: rehash of the original X-Force line-up (minus Sunspot for whatever reason).

Add to this recent nostalgia wave the fact that there wasn't enough black representation in X-Men for readers to be "nostalgic" of, the lack of black creators working for the X-franchise, the way characters created after the 90's are seen as easily disposable, the lack of a clear forward vision for the franchise instead of simply catering to nostalgia... you could go on and on.

I honestly think that part of the problem is Storm. I hate to say this because she is one of my favorite characters, but because she is SO high profile, writers may feel like they are showing diversity just by using her, and having one other somewhat high profile black mutant with Bishop. They feel their "quota", either imagined or mandated, is filled because her importance, history and presence fills it. News to them, just because of all that, does not mean it makes up for the lack of other black mutants, and specifically to this topic black male mutants especially.

It's why Sunfire, a C lister at best at this point, is the male asian representation, Psylocke (aside from the beginning and very recently) and Jubilee, in their minds, made up the "Asian representation".

I should clarify that I don't agree with that stance nor is it possibly even intentional, but I think it's what happening unintentionally.

I think these two posts pretty much sum up why.

[FUBAR007]

So maybe the question is better phrased as which character when introduced did you think this character is going to be the next great X-men character?

Maggott. Unique design, bizarre power set, gross but apt codename, and a distinct and interesting backstory. Joe Kelly took what I've long presumed was a random, off-hand character design by Lobdell and Madureira and turned him into an interesting person with a history and understandable motivations.

Then, of course, he was redshirt-ed by Frank Tieri. Such a waste of a good character.

I wish Morrison had gotten to use Maggott. That would've been a lot of fun to read.