Chanigng characters race or sexuality for DC characters

[LAWtoyoto 432]

I love it. Make all characters queer in my opinion. If you don't like, you have nearly 90 years of comic books to go back and read. Onto the future my friends.

Except why most people don't want to read back because they want new contents , and many stuffs from the past are way too outdated for the modern day espcially art and technology.

[M L A]

When was it revealed that Obsidian was gay? I'm currently reading through the original Infinity Inc and it appears to me that Obsidian wasn't intended to be a gay character from the get go.

Post Zero Hour JLA is where it was first implied he was gay but Andreyko's Manhunter confirmed it in 2006 by giving him a boyfriend

[9th.]

I'd say it's a case by case basis but it doesn't really bother me 99% of the time (comics and their adaptations). Comics are breeding ground for this sort of thing because most of the big franchises were made when minorities were looked down on. There is a wealth of characters they could use instead of making Nightwing asian or Lois Lane black but they don't generate nearly as much interest. A Latina Wonder Woman is getting way more attention than an Aztek book would.

[Agent Z]

The fact that reimagining old characters is the only way to inject diversity into the genre just proves that the genre is dying creatively. To man old fans that don’t try new things.

Except it isn't the only way to inject diversity. No one is saying that it is.

[Agent Z]

Racebending maybe popular in Hollywood right now, but outside the USA, it is viewed negatively.

Some people view it negatively in the USA as well. Most outside the USA don't care.

I have seen people on forums compain why they continue to racebend gingers for example.

Funny how these same people have nothing to say when we have white actors with black or brown hair playing characters who are redheads in the source material. Charlie Cox refused to even dye his hair red when playing Daredevil and I didn't see anyone complaining.

Etta in Tamaki's run on Wonder Woman was horribly depicted in personality and in apperance. She looked like a character from a 90s comic.

I've read 90s comics. None of the women looked like Etta in Tamaki's run.

[Timothy Hunter]

Post Zero Hour JLA is where it was first implied he was gay but Andreyko's Manhunter confirmed it in 2006 by giving him a boyfriend

Thanks. I've actually read both of those runs, so it's good that I haven't missed anything.

[Aahz]

The problem is new characters tend to get ignored by the CB audience, so that's why they use the old ones.

Which in many cases leads to a backlash by the CB audience, unless they do it with a charcter the CB audience ignored allready before ...

The only successfull example i can think of are Harley and Ivy, and that had a lot of build up right from the strat (not sure if intentional or unintentional).

[BohemiaDrinker]

As with everything, it can be done well or poorly.

In principle, the only problem I have with it is the lack of consistence cross-media: we've got one black Jimmy Olsen, one black Deadshot, one black Black Canary and so on. All the other versions of these characters remain white. So if a kid looks up to one of them, and tries to research them... heh.

[Digifiend]

Was power rangers getting more diverse with each generation a sign of the franchise dying or its audience expanding?

PR hasn't been more diverse with each generation, because it's been diverse from the beginning. The original team was a black guy (Black Ranger Zack), an Asian girl (Yellow Ranger Trini), a white guy (Blue Ranger Billy), a white girl (Pink Ranger Kimberly), and a mixed race guy (Red Ranger Jason, who's half-Asian half-Caucasian). The black ranger being black and the yellow one being Asian was seen as racist in hindsight, so when they needed to recast, they switched them (Adam was Asian and Aisha was black), also having a Latino replacement red (Rocky). Green/White Ranger Tommy was later revealed to be Native American.

[Aahz]

In principle, the only problem I have with it is the lack of consistence cross-media: we've got one black Jimmy Olsen, one black Deadshot, one black Black Canary and so on.

Black Jimmy Olsen was imo in general a bad idea, since the comic version is imo to iconic to be changed, and the CW-version had in addition to the racebending a completly different personality than the classic version. Thats really a case where they should have either created a new character or used a differnt character for the role.

Black Deadshot is also one I never really got, simply because they could have just used Bronze Tiger instead.

[Jabare]

Deep down do I truly care.... no.

I might have a knee-jerk reaction to a change but upon reflection, it's probably rooted in nostalgia or some insecurity I have. Often these changes don't matter.


There are a few specific examples of a character's race, gender, sexual orientation being essential to their story, but 99% of the time it's not.


Whenever you're going to make a change instead of creating a new character it's best to consider how iconic said character is and if altering that aspect affects the character at all. For example, Alan Scott being gay doesn't alter anything fundamentally about his character. The average person won't care.


Another example would be Young Justice: Outsiders. Aqualad is seemingly gay or bisexual in the show. There's a brief scene between him and Garth which in a vacuum is fine, but season 1 established there was that love triangle with Tula, and Garth was the rival. So it feels like the change was more about synergy with the comics. This doesn't fundamentally take away from the character in any way, but it does seem to go against the narrative they crafted. It'd be like Wolverine and Cyclops getting together after Jean dies. Like it's not "impossible" but even for Jerry Springer, that'd be a stretch.

For the fanbase, it's much more palatable to make these changes to a minor character than a long-established one. They can still change a long-established character. Look at Marvel with Iceman. Bobby being gay doesn't alter him significantly at all. Some longtime comic historians might be annoyed, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

DC's made changes to Amanda Waller and Etta Candy, that annoyed some but ultimately didn't affect the cores of their character.

Media's a powerful tool that can influence society and future generations. There are real long-term benefits from featuring other characters that have historically been underrepresented. It also makes a more attractive product for a larger readership.

[Aahz]

I think with the long established ones it comes also down to how big of a fanbase the character has and if he is a solo or a team character.

I guess in case of Iceman and Alan Scott most readers are more fans of the X-Men or the JSA as a whole and not just of these two characters specifically.

[The Darknight Detective]

It's not that people are against racial or gender diversity it's just that when you change someone's skin pigmentation or physical gender you are drastically altering a characters appearance, to the point that the fan of that character feels alienated from the one they first identified with.

Oh, I'm dead set against changing anybody's racial or sexual identify against their will in reality. For fictional characters, though, it's not that big of a deal for me.

[Alpha]

Oh, I'm dead set against changing anybody's racial or sexual identify against their will in reality.

You are a good man. May mother earth bless you

[Username taken]

As I said in a previous thread , people don't have a problem with diverse characters. However, changing the race or sexuality of an established character will make people furious. Racebending maybe popular in Hollywood right now, but outside the USA, it is viewed negatively. I have seen people on forums compain why they continue to racebend gingers for example. Etta Candy, Helena Bertinelli and the version of Legion that Bendis introduced are a example of this. Bendis rebooted the Legion and what became of it. Nothing. Etta in Tamaki's run on Wonder Woman was horribly depicted in personality and in apperance. She looked like a character from a 90s comic. I'm all for diversity but chanhing established characters should not be the norm, especially characters who are from a diffrent ethnicity. Diversity doesn't mean only people from different races, but people from different ethnicities as well.

The bolded part isn't true.

A lot of people have problems with diversity in media and in real life.

A lot of complaints from people about changing characters isn't just because the characters are changed, it's because of their inherent bias and/or bigotry.