The most racist retcon in all of Marvel Comics history.

[BitParallel]

Go to the “Ask Kurt Busiek” thread. Since Kurt was one of the people who fleshed out Maria back in the 90s, I asked him there about her ethnicity. He states he wrote her as Italian-American, but writers since then are free to do how they want.

Hmm I don’t even remember her appearing in volume 3 but regardless, he can say he intended her to be Italian-American but he never state it on panel. So, it’s not canon.


And Italians are white.

[Maria Stark]

Spanish people are confused as hell by America's 'whole anyone who speaks Spanish is not white categorization'. Some Spanish actors have talked about it.

Actor Antonio Banderas talked a bit about it in an interview

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/09/80380...=1595831054506

Thank you very much, for finding this. That's exactly, what I'm talking about.

[Maria Stark]

I was talking specifically of Europeans.

And I, was talking specifically about South Americans. But you know that. But you just pretend otherwise, because you know you have no arguments to contest me.

[Maria Stark]

I dont know you, your husband, or your races so Im not going to speak on that. Its a recipe for disaster to try to school another poster on whatever they personally identify as

As for your Asian examples. Yes they are all the same race. They are not the same ethnicity though. I dont know how people within the original countries see it but in America, Ive never seen an Asian person claim to not be Asian. Race and ethnicity are not the same thing. One can be Japanese, Chinese or Korean and still be considered Asian just like a person can be Irish, Italian or French and still be white/European

Do you know what else is also a recipe for disaster? Ignore reality. Read here what Antonio Banderas, who is European, has to say about it.

Spanish people are confused as hell by America's 'whole anyone who speaks Spanish is not white categorization'. Some Spanish actors have talked about it.

Actor Antonio Banderas talked a bit about it in an interview

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/09/80380...=1595831054506

Don't misunderstand me. I don't think you are trolling me, like a few others here are. I just say that it is not because it is something that you have never seen happening, it does not mean that it does not actually happen.

So, for the third time, I ask you, if this is not racism, what is it then?

[Maria Stark]

Howard naming an island after his wife and adding a word that means "saint" is proof she was Latina? Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me? Or did you just read the part that interests you, and ignored the part where, literally, in the same caption box, it is written that Carbonell is Tony's mother's maiden name?

Boy ... No wonder you use a supervillain as an avatar.

[Maria Stark]

Especially since Santa is also the word used in Italian, which appears to be the debate.

A debate that you will lose, because it is written in the same caption box, that Carbonell is Maria Stark's maiden name.

It's right there. In. The. Same. Caption. Box.

[Havok83]

Do you know what else is also a recipe for disaster? Ignore reality. Read here what Antonio Banderas, who is European, has to say about it.




Don't misunderstand me. I don't think you are trolling me, like a few others here are. I just say that it is not because it is something that you have never seen happening, it does not mean that it does not actually happen.

So, for the third time, I ask you, if this is not racism, what is it then?

What are you even asking at this point? Again, I do not know you, your husband or your races. Why do you want me to personally comment on you and your situation?

[Mike_Murdock]

And I, was talking specifically about South Americans. But you know that. But you just pretend otherwise, because you know you have no arguments to contest me.

But what does South America have to do with anything?

[U.N. Owen]

Ten pages of self-insert fanfiction trying to become a reality.

Are you kidding me? Or did you just read the part that interests you, and ignored the part where, literally, in the same caption box, it is written that Carbonell is Tony's mother's maiden name?

You have no way to prove she's a Latina when the same name argument can be said for her being from Catalonia.

A debate that you will lose, because it is written in the same caption box, that Carbonell is Maria Stark's maiden name.

It's right there. In. The. Same. Caption. Box.

Again, it can just be Catalan translated into Spanish because guess what Catalonians do that.

[Mr.Majestic]

This whole thing reminds me of when folks said Marvel was racist for hiring a white man to play Dr. Strange in the movies, when he was always white.

Well you see I once read something about the fact that Stan Lee originally imagined Dr. Strange as Asian than changed him to regular White guy later on. Therefore there was an opening to racebend him to Asian. I would've loved to see John Cho as the Sorcerer Supreme.

Bendis completely ignored...

That's basically Bendis' modus operandi.

One, Carbonell is Catalan in origin, which is not Spanish. End of discussion.

But Catalonia is still in Spain right? Most Catalan speakers hold Spanish passports?

Remember the Ancient One? I’m one of those people who was happy they race changed the character because of the mystical Asian character who speaks in proverbs like a magical Confucius already aged badly. And my family is Taiwanese.

Well I'm Asian too and I thought the erasure of one of the few Asian characters in the world's largest movie franchise was a garbage play. Just because something is stereotypical doesn't make it one dimensional. The Wire could easily have been stereotypical BS but it became something great.

I’m pretty sure by then, that Tony Stark was Robert Downey Jr in their eyes, so changing that possible ethnic side didn’t matter.

Robert Downey Jr. is Jewish(non practicing) I believe. So is Scarlett Johansson.

I usually see characters as characters, not as walking ethnic figures. When I think of Tony Stark, I think in things such as science genius, has his own corporation and loads of money, invented the Iron Man armor in a cave with a box of scraps, snarker supreme, etc. I don't think about his ethnic ancestry. I would object if they suddenly make him a black guy, or cast a black actor to play him in films, but only because it would be a big departure from his standard visual aspect.

Wow it must be cool to not see colour or not need to see colour. But do you know what sucks about people that don't see colour? They never seem to notice when it isn't there.

Collins is Maria’s middle name. Not her surname.

Collins is a funny middle name. Maybe she was actually born Maria Collins Carbonell? Maybe she was half Latina? Which would make Tony one quarter Latino. That would make him whiter than Cameron Diaz.

Some people need to learn what racism is before proclaiming something as racist

You're not going to go in a Systematic Racism spiel are you?

Changing the origin of a fictional character's mother is not racism.

It can be. When they made Blade mixed race that smacked of racism. When they made Shang Chi Eurasian it was. Changing someone's parentage to make the character more palatable to a primarily White audience sounds pretty racist to me.

Ive never seen an Asian person claim to not be Asian.

But there are. It's actually quite common in the South Asian community, India, Pakistan and such.

Ten pages of self-insert fanfiction trying to become a reality.

Now that's not very nice.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Well you see I once read something about the fact that Stan Lee originally imagined Dr. Strange as Asian than changed him to regular White guy later on. Therefore there was an opening to racebend him to Asian. I would've loved to see John Cho as the Sorcerer Supreme.



That's basically Bendis' modus operandi.



But Catalonia is still in Spain right? Most Catalan speakers hold Spanish passports?



Well I'm Asian too and I thought the erasure of one of the few Asian characters in the world's largest movie franchise was a garbage play. Just because something is stereotypical doesn't make it one dimensional. The Wire could easily have been stereotypical BS but it became something great.



Robert Downey Jr. is Jewish(non practicing) I believe. So is Scarlett Johansson.



Wow it must be cool to not see colour or not need to see colour. But do you know what sucks about people that don't see colour? They never seem to notice when it isn't there.



Collins is a funny middle name. Maybe she was actually born Maria Collins Carbonell? Maybe she was half Latina? Which would make Tony one quarter Latino. That would make him whiter than Cameron Diaz.



You're not going to go in a Systematic Racism spiel are you?



It can be. When they made Blade mixed race that smacked of racism. When they made Shang Chi Eurasian it was. Changing someone's parentage to make the character more palatable to a primarily White audience sounds pretty racist to me.



But there are. It's actually quite common in the South Asian community, India, Pakistan and such.



Now that's not very nice.

Isn't Dr. Droom the Asian prototype of Dr. Druid not Dr. Strange?

[From The Shadows]

I never understood why they couldn't just update the ancient one to be less offensive. Its been done with Luke Cage. Taking an actress and making her bald going to be less offensive? Brother Voodoo would have been cool, another character that got modernized. He was even the new doctor strange. How about Clea (theres a woman)? But a black american called Baron Zemo? But maybe the original would have been seen as racist. Strangely enough it was one of my favorites of the MU films. No pun intended.

[Kurt Busiek]

Go to the “Ask Kurt Busiek” thread. Since Kurt was one of the people who fleshed out Maria back in the 90s, I asked him there about her ethnicity. He states he wrote her as Italian-American, but writers since then are free to do how they want.

I don't know why you're saying I fleshed her out -- she was dead before Tony became Iron Man, and I didn't do a lot of stories that flashed back to when she was alive.

Nor did I say that I wrote her as Italian-American, merely that I'd have said she was if asked.

kdb

[Kurt Busiek]

Isn't Dr. Droom the Asian prototype of Dr. Druid not Dr. Strange?

They both have similar origins.

Droom/Druid was originally a white guy who learned Asian magic, and the magic itself turned him Asian-looking. It was really dumb.

Strange was originally Asian -- not because Stan conceived him as Asian, but because Ditko did. Stan didn't even see the first Dr. Strange story until Ditko brought in the pencils; it was entirely his idea. Ditko drew him as a fairly stock Asian-magician character.

Later, when they gave him an origin, they retconned him into a white guy who went and learned Asian magic, much like Droom did. There's even a montage at the end of that story that might be intended to suggest that the white guy turned Asian-looking when he mastered the magic, but Ditko didn't leave enough room in the montage for Stan to make that explicit.

And shortly thereafter, Ditko stopped drawing him to look Asian anyway, and they just played him as a white guy.

kdb

[Maria Stark]

I don't know why you're saying I fleshed her out -- she was dead before Tony became Iron Man, and I didn't do a lot of stories that flashed back to when she was alive.

Nor did I say that I wrote her as Italian-American, merely that I'd have said she was if asked.

kdb

Hello Mr. Buziek. Thanks for taking the time to post here. Let me clarify, why I started this thread.

I created this thread, to vent my outrage at the retcon that replaced Tony Stark's Latin mother with a white woman. Because, this is a reticon that I consider to be racist. And, it's something that affects me personally, for objective reasons.

As a Latin American woman, born in Brazil, married to an American, I went through several extremely embarrassing situations in the six years that we lived in the United States, since, according to the standards of your country, we are considered a mixed race couple, and because of that, not deserving of equal treatment. Things got so offensive over time, that we packed up and went back to Brazil.

Well, we have a nine year old son, who has been a huge fan of Iron Man, practically, since he was a little baby. In my process of researching the character, I eventually read Iron Man Volume 3 issue # 30, where Tony's mother's maiden name is stated as Carbonnel, which, is a surname of Spanish origin. Even though as a Brazilian, I’m not from a Spanish-speaking country, since here we speak Portuguese, we are still, all latinos, and my son was delighted to know, that he is like Tony Stark. half-Latino, half-American. Well, not anymore.

I know that this happened a few years ago, and I was outraged by it at that time as well. If I’m outraged again now, it’s because, reading the article found at the link below, made this feeling of indignation hit me again in spades.

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-10-ways-i...ver-the-years/

Of course, I shouldn't take this kind of thing so personally, but I did anyway, and complained about it, here on this forum.

I have received on this thread since then, a variety of responses, ranging from those made by the inevitable trolls, accusing me of ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, to those who were quite enlightening, which I must say, are among the majority.

One of these responses showed me that, possibly, the first time Tony's mother's maiden name appeared in the comics, was during Terry Kavanagh's run, which precedes Joe Quesada’s run. I was aware of this, but I read these stories out of order, as I was advised to avoid reading Kavanagh's run, because the writer made a complete mess with the character's continuity. So, I simply assumed that this was another one of his mistakes.

Well, I have no problem with being corrected, and I believe that it’s essential, to always be accurately informed. So, I ask you, who has a huge knowledge of comics, was Terry Kavanagh really the first writer to give Tony's mother a maiden name?