Originally Posted by
John Aston
Chiming in on a few points:
I like Miles as Spider-Man just fine. He popped up shortly, it seemed, after creator interviews on DVD bonus materials claiming a part of Spider-Man's appeal was that anybody could be under the mask. I think that's partly was the basis to put a minority under the mask. The other, which had nothing to do with race, was to lower the age of Spider-Man considering the world through merchandise, films and animation knows him as a teen, young adult, single and socially a bit awkward and the comics at the time didn't reflect that as a whole. But, after Ultimate Spider-Man initially ended, editorially it would be redundant to go into another Peter Parker origin. So, three birds, one stone.
As large amounts of Marvel and DCU characters are entering the mainstream, it's weird as a long time comic reader that people want to campaign to have fundamental identity changes to the more iconic or well-known characters who have been marketed with the same identifiers since the 1940s or 60s. Is lobbying Disney or Warner Brothers on Twitter really going to persuade them to up and drastically change any character in a $100 million or larger investment which partly hinges on generations of people who are familiar with said character presented a certain way and will contribute to introducing said character to the next generation.
If we're talking print, there are plenty of diverse comics out there that are superior regardless if they were diverse or not to include the cape variety. That said, I personally don't have a problem with Marvel experimenting. They turned Thor into a frog and at one time replaced him with a horse alien. Rhodey became Iron Man. Hulk became Mr. Fixit. The second wave of X-Men. If the storytelling is compelling changing a character's identity is fine.
Marvel's changes seem to be superficial. It partly rests on how the stories are told over a short period of time usually with the original character making a comeback just in time for a film. Complete stories that show how a character grows by how they resolve problems is how a reader makes an emotional connection. With most mainstream comics having stories that resolve after five, six or ten issues, there ain't a whole of meat to digest.
There's plenty of diversity in entertainment. One has to simply seek it out and avoid the bottle-necking/lower denominator films/music/comics/games/whatever companies push.
I know I have to.
Also, straight white males can write people who aren't straight while males and the same goes for any combination of race/gender/sexuality/religion. The credibility of those voices presented in the work solely rests on the consumer. If you don't buy into what the project is selling because the bi-sexual Japanese female's dialogue or story didn't ring true, that's fine. Maybe it didn't for you. For others it may have. We may consume art in a vacuum but it isn't published that way.
Other than the comic artists I grew up with, very few of the current generation I'm familiar with what they look like. I don't need to generalize or marginalize any creator because what color they are, who they like to sleep with or what's in their underwear. I let their art speak to me. That's more important, at least, to me.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is art. There are people who connect with Michael Bay films just as much as there others who connect with Jane Austin books.