The artists / penciler are just as responsible when they change the character's features along with their skin.
Using Monet for an example. Originally she was light brown at best and caramel at darkest during her intro in Phalanx Covenant. She also had kinkier hair & more plump features.
Phalanx Covenant (5).jpg
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There's room for variable to a point because she flip-flopped from the start. Again light brown or caramel. But neither of those is white or slightly tan like how she is nowadays.
Not only has she been light & white washed, her features have also changed. I can let this one slide a bit as well because there were two artists on Phalanx Covenant. Her first depiction had plump features but the second artist gave her more "delicate" ones. Her hair stayed curly but her nose & lips varied by the two artist.
But Monet is why I was amused when people were ranting about the changes made to Blink in the previous Exiles series. Ahmed wanted to show her Bahamian roots and she was depicted with curly hair & plump features and people hated it because they assumed she was white or Asian. When people bring up her being Bahamian, they argued there's white people in the Bahamas. Well we got the reverse with Monet who's blackness has been most muted or outright erased since 2000 and people defending it with "Well she's Algerian" or headcanons that she's Arab or Berber and shouldn't look "African American", neither of which has ever been said.
In any case, since we'd mostly lost Monet, I was fine with gaining Blink despite blackness still being muted when the characters are rainbow colors.
That's moot. The sisters were supposed to be an exact replica of Monet so their father's wouldn't know she was gone. Makes no sense for her appearance to vary based on whether it's her sisters or not, because they were supposed to be identical to keep up the identity of their sister. Only difference is Monet was thought to be Autistic because Claudette was and it would seep through. Real Monet isn't Autistic and that should be the only difference.
But if we do go there, real Monet was brown with plump features. lol So initial point still stands.
Real M.jpg
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Last edited by Silver Fang; 08-07-2020 at 10:15 AM.
Personally...I'm not overly hung-up on how inconsistent they depict characters of colour in comic books, with regards to features and skin colour. I usually just "no-prize" it to: the artist's style, the colourist's palette and reference/source material, and the editors not fine-tooth-combing through/looking for errors pre-production. There can be any number of reasons why colours don't turn out right, post production.
Lord Ewing *Praise His name! Uplift Him in song!* Your divine works will be remembered and glorified in worship for all eternity. Amen!
Hard for me to give that benefit of the doubt when it's only brown / black characters that have this problem on a consistent basis.
Examples. Mystique is blue & red (or burgundy) in her true form. And always has been. Not once has she shown up in her real from looking purple & pink or violate & orange. If she has, it's certainly not often.
Domino is black & white and she doesn't show up looking dark grey & brown. Everybody knows she's literally supposed to be Dalmatian colored.
Even when it's tons of light, Mystique doesn't turn white like the brown characters do whenever they're hit by sunlight or go into a bright room.
So there seems to be something else going on here.
Only other different colored character that varies a lot besides the black & brown ones is Blink. Sometimes she's purple & sometimes she's pink.
Last edited by Silver Fang; 08-07-2020 at 10:27 AM.
I'm not there, front and centre, at every stage of production from concept to publishing so...I will give the benefit of the doubt.
Case in point...when Marauders first started Blee was colouring Storm too light-skinned but by the fourth issue she was being coloured darker...I think someone might have pointed it out to the team and they course corrected. Which suggests that it could have been an error on Blee's part (wrong source material?) and not a deliberate attempt to Erase Black from Comics.
Some colourists have knowledge of how skin tones can look varied in different light. Some colourists don't have that understanding.
Some colourists choose the wrong source material as reference, some choose earlier more definitive sources.
Some colourists work with a much more varied colour palette/programme than others (I don't think they ALL use the exact same colouring platform through out)
Last edited by Devaishwarya; 08-07-2020 at 10:38 AM.
Lord Ewing *Praise His name! Uplift Him in song!* Your divine works will be remembered and glorified in worship for all eternity. Amen!
I know right! The X-Books are shh!t when it comes to their minority chars actually ever being involved/key to the storyline, let alone one of any real significance...The last time it was a black was....Major X...one of the only Summers kids not to make a move to the 616.
And I'm right with you man, it was some bullSh!t casting decisions all around, but Sunspots was ridiculous
Maybe it will get revealed his powers repel any other similarly melanin 'd person? That would explain a lotlol
lol Bruh, unfortunately thats waaaay beyond
Wait did this really happen in the series?
I feel like that would be similar to the recent 'M turning into Penance to kick ass' development While as interesting as it it is, It still takes away from seeing a brown/black Xman, I can imagine future story-lines that involves them being stuck in their 'powered up' form etc.And sure it may be visually appealing in theory but how many red, blue, green,pink etc non-human looking 'bad as fighters' are on the X-Men or even the Marvel universe? Its rare to find one looking like a normal black/brown person.THats why the rainbows were soo cool....they were visually awesome (under Bachelo) yet with Synch not transforming you couldn't fogert a black dude was controlling all that.
GrindrStone(D)
Which is fine. Everyone has different levels of tolerance and optimism vs. pessimism. Speaking for myself only, my tolerance level for some things has always been low to the point that I don't & can't give benefit of the doubt with shady (or lack there of here lol) stuff that's repeated.
A non comic book example, there's controversy among the WWE fandom with Mark Calaway (The Undertaker) & racism. Given all I've seen, I think he's racist. There's plenty arguing on the other side like all the non-white friends he has & and non-white people who speak highly of him. But Hulk Hogan had that too, and anyone up to date knows how that turned out. So for me the black friend excuse is just that. An excuse.
The X-Office and their handling of POC leaves A LOT to be desired and I believe shows very clear bias on a fairly consistent basis and it's avoidable if they actually pay attention & care which they evidently don't. lol
Last edited by Silver Fang; 08-07-2020 at 12:05 PM.
I don't think many of us think that there is intention for these (IMO) microaggressions. But they shouldn't be given a pass for ignorance. If a colorist doesn't have the understanding... then go get it. If the colorist got the memo on the color of the costume, then they can get the memo on the color of a character's skin. It's that simple. Anyone who knows an artist knows they like to get things right... and so if they're not getting it right, it's obviously not as important to them and that is where the problem lies.
It should be a collaborative effort between the writer/penciler/colorist/editor, and they all share some of the responsibility. As Silver Fang pointed out, Mystique and Domino's coloring is often pretty consistent. Like even the shade of blue that's used for Mystique. It's probably catalogued. I'm not saying it's a great idea to catalogue skin tones for characters of color, but obviously some effort went into keeping Mystique consistent, so it would be nice to get that effort put into characters of color as well.