Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

of course marvel has no gay characters as prominent as wolverine if anything Marvel U is regressing on the diversity front.

I mean we got three flagship books for Marvel Now. And the main covers are 100% white. Now while Movie Avengers, Spider-man, and Wolverine can be argued as their for sales the rest have no excuse. So marvel chose another about 7 or so white characters to push and no minorities in 2012 for frak sake. I mean really they are pushing havok as a major mutant leader over Storm? I mean for frak sakes how is that not a white male bias. Storm dominates Havok in any objective metric of popularity and x-relevance you might want to use. But no gotta push the white male.

I mean really a bunch of white characters (3 of whom are males with blue eyes and blonde hair) fighting the Red Skull and his Nazi Team. Nothing preaches tolerance like that. Talk about Cognitive Dissonance.

 

Yes, I'll never forget Axel Alonso's infamous "No Minorities in 2012" press release.

 

Link? Didn't hear this.

Sounds monumentally stupid (Typical current Marvel)

 

As a gay male myself I would rather that Marvel, Dark Horse etc don't create homosexual characters if they're going to be stereotypical and one-dimensional. It's rather insulting to presume we're alll the same. It's just like they want to say "see, we're catering for minorities!!!!!!1!!!1!!111!" No, just no.

 

I think we can all agree that we don't want characters to be stereotypical and one-dimensional. But I also think it's unfair how we react when companies (in their ham-fisted, money bags way) try and put in diversity some of the time. For example, the idea that introducing a gay character (or a character of color, or more women of color, etc.) would be "gimmicky" or "forced/unnatural" or "stereotypical."

You know what's gimmicky? Creating a constant stream of white male characters as the main heroes of every era of Star Wars. Everything in the universe only happening to the Big 3.
Forced/Unnatural? Creating a fictional universe, set in some supposedly sprawling and diversely populated galaxy far far away, where all but two Mandos are straight. Having only white humans in Rogue Squadron. etc.
Stereotypical? The hero always gets the girl. People of color can't be main characters. Strong female protagonists in black cat suits.

All of those things have been pretty much done to death, fit the idea of gimmicky, forced, stereotypical, yet we accept them as the default normal.

But like, if we had a brown gay human male Jedi in a catsuit, someone would point at him and say his addition to Star Wars canon is gimmicky and forced.

(Note: I am not advocating for that character, necessarily--though a good writer would be able to write a character like that in a non stereotypical, multidimensional way even if there ARE elements of the character that might be stereotypical.)


[Marvel and DC have created some pretty interested LGBTQ characters that are complex and not forced, like Karolina Dean and Xavin, Renee Montoya, etc. For what it's worth. I'd like to see Star Wars be more gutsy, too.]

 

Stop giving Mara the catsuit already, people. Its completely illogical.

 

The proof is in the pudding. When you see teaser after teaser of white males with a few token white females. Heck DC tried on diversity, they failed miserably for the most part but they tried. Marvel is not even going to try.

X-men are whiter now then at any point since 60s when the O5 bombed.
Avengers have improved I suppose except on the flagship title.

Heck Marvel cancels Avengers Academy then dumps all the nonwhites from the starting 6 into a Hunger Games Ripoff. Or of the main cast 75% of all minorities, only 25% of the white characters and none of the LGBTs interestingly enough.

 

Honestly, it never fails to amaze me just how whitewashed scifi is.

Fantasy is bad too. A black person is apparently immersion breaking but magic and dragons nah that is just fine.

 

Um. I'm probably a bad person, because I got temporarily distracted from your point by the mental image of a Jedi guy in a catsuit.
...I think it will suffice to say that if he was written by a good writer I would be a fan for more reasons than his diversity score.

You do have a good point though, that a gimmick we're used to is still a gimmick.

 

I hate Avengers vs X-Men to death

Stop playing coy and give me a link dammit

 

Now Look they care they got Miles Morales. As for gays Wiccan is still around.

 

It was a joke. I was quoting Skaddix's post above mine.

 

I was joking too. Still having trouble at what you meant

 

See I'm not a big comic reader at all. To me Hercules is Kevin Sorbo

And I'd hope a gay X-Man would take part in a gay wedding

Mentioning this Miles Morales made me think of Storm, who came into being in 1975 according to the internetz, which also linked to Black Panther who was a member of the Avengers in like 1968. Look even at Blade from 1973, he's had a very good run if you ask me.

Just glancing at this as an outsider it seems like the comics have at least made mulitple attempts at significantly breaking down the color barrier with prominate main characters over the course of many years.

 

Renee Montoya hasn't been seen since the reboot. Though DC at least still have Batwoman headlining a mainstream comic to much critical acclaim and solid sales.

Partly it's because Marvel do more team books - though I don't necessarily think that's a defense since not many of those team books, even if they have diverse characters in them, are led by characters other than straight, white males, and partly even if they are, headlining a book is a real statement about where the focus in the comic lies, but even taking that into account, and partly I know more about DC than Marvel generally speaking. But I haven't been that impressed by Marvel's line-up lately.

They've done a few one-off things that I'm genuinely impressed by, like Miles Morales (though of course, he's in an AU), and the recent launch of Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel (which I've been reading and it's pretty ace). But last year they managed to cancel every single one of their titles (other than USM) starring a character who was not a straight, white male. Black Panther, the hispanic, female Ghost Rider, X-23, Daken (who I believe was bisexual as well as half Japanese?), Generation Hope...

(Sidenote: Can ANYONE explain to me why Marvel have never given Storm her own ongoing comic? It's criminal!)

Of course DC's non-white characters have also seen total collapse recently and a lot of them were in the first wave to get canceled; I think there's basically Batwing, Blue Beetle and Green Lantern Corps (with John Stewart as co-lead) and that's pretty much it. Their number of women leading titles has held steady or increased, though, I think.

In very broad terms, I'd say that DC are better at representation of women, Marvel at racial representation, and these days...I think I'd give the edge to DC on sexual orientation too.

I'd also say that regardless of personal tastes, the comics genre is all about reinvention and retelling the same stories with key differences and variations, often through the use of alternate universes or alternate timelines. It's very in keeping with the medium to do something like bring a character in from an alternate universe with key differences and similarities to see where their lives diverged. The only reason I think there is to question gay alternate Wolverine is the fact that it says, "but hey don't worry he's not the real version!" at the same time it promotes the normalcy of the idea by putting it on a big name character and saying it's no insult. It's the sort of thing that's only a problem because there's not enough mainstream representation. But, of course, there's not enough mainstream representation. So.

Anyway, though we're on a tangent and I should get back to Star Wars. And reading Captain Marvel...

 

You are incorrect.

 

Like, recently, or historically? Cus Batwoman says otherwise, buddy.

 

This is the company that just rebuilt its entire line from the ground up. They could've made anybody anything. Instead they waited until the Northstar wedding, then responded by making one additional gay character from its B (or even C) tier. You could give them credit for Midnighter and Apollo if you really wanted to, but even they were Wildstorm characters that DC just deigned to keep around.

DC - a handful of gay characters. Marvel - numerous gay characters, at least one from another species, just held its first gay wedding, which also happened to be multiracial.

 

Well, to be clear, I really don't think either company is a bastion of...doing as well as they could or should. I also think that DC missed a few opportunities when they relaunched. But if we're gonna play the numbers game, the relaunch introduced Bunker (gay, hispanic guy) as a core part of the Teen Titans line-up, Starling (gay white woman), Shining Knight was a bit part character before the reboot but is now one of the regulars in Demon Knights - I'm not totally sure what Shining Knight's sexual orientation is, but I figure he's worth noting as a transgendered person, and of course, as you noted, Alan Scott is now gay - and he almost certainly wasn't made gay in response to Northstar's wedding because the Earth 2 comic was in production for a long time - it was always intended to be a second wave title and they were expecting to cancel some stuff sooner. The writer's on record as saying that it's been planned since late 2011 and it was announced before the announcement of Northstar's wedding (which sure, could be DC getting their side out first, but I think it's pretty clear it was planned for a long time). It's also fair to note that Scott is alternate universe like Miles Morales, but to the comic's credit, his Green Lantern is at least being configured as Earth 2's pre-eminent, most powerful hero; their successor to Superman (who is dead in that universe).

And, yes, Apollo and Midnighter are Wildstorm characters but DC did choose to introduce them into their universe with the reboot, as they did with Voodoo, who, in the Wildstorm universe, was a black, bisexual human/alien hybrid and is now...well, there's Voodoo and the human she was cloned from, Pris, though neither of their sexual orientations has been made clear since the subject hasn't come up in the comic yet (although her title is now also canceled, sooooo, yeah that's not great).

Honestly, yeah, the fact that a lot of DC's queer characters are secondary characters and the reboot was overwhelmingly used to re-establish the "iconic" (ugh that word) versions of many characters strikes me as a real shame, and certainly something that bears criticism; I suppose we'll see if Marvel uses Marvel Now as an opportunity to address its representational issues - perhaps it will make more of the opportunity.

But when I said "these days" I didn't specifically mean "this instant" or even "this last year". I include in my consideration things like Secret Six, which featured a gay, polyamorous relationship (they were all engaged but alas, the reboot occurred before the wedding) and a pansexual eunuch. To list a few off the top of my head where representational intersectionality appears, there's Renee Montoya as the Question. Or the explication that yes, Amazons are largely gay and have traditional courtship rituals. Mikaal Thomas' Starman is a gay alien, too. Anissa Pierce and Grace Choi form an interracial relationship where neither party is white.

If we're reaching back further, I would also include Morrison's explication of the relationship between Monsieur Mallah and the Brain (a French-speaking gorilla and a disembodied, male-identifying brain) just because...why would I ever miss an opportunity to reference that?

Speaking of existing characters who still have prominent roles in the DCU, John Constantine is bisexual according to his Vertigo days - I wonder if they'll keep that as canon in the New 52 (I hope so though am not naive enough to believe it's a given).

I mean, obviously it's sort of useless to just go around listing things - given the different styles of storytelling and presentation, with Marvel's habit of putting huge casts in team books vs DC's habit of having fewer characters and tighter focus, I'm not sure it would even be useful.

But I do think that characterising DC as having "a handful" vs Marvel's "numerous" isn't entirely fair. As I said at the time, I acknowledge that I know DC better, so I'm willing to be wrong and I don't think it's like...trails in the dust or anything, but you know, DC also have gay aliens.

 

Well, clearly I don't know the DC universe as well as I thought I did, because I've never even heard of many of those people.

But yeah, I was mostly saying "this instant" - I'm a big fan of Montoya Question, for one thing, but my understanding is she's in continuity limbo now, so who the hell knows.

 

Yeah, Renee's around - she's been referenced in Batwoman as her ex, but they're doing something new with The Question and it ain't her, so she's probably just a cop again. Not that she wasn't a great cop in Gotham Central and all, but man, that story where she became the Question was just punch you in the fact amazing. I'm pretty upset and pissed off that she's gone.

 

Does that mean Vic Sage is alive again?

 

...no one knows. The Question is like...hugely reimagined as a sort of Phantom Stranger type character constantly seeking the answer to some question. I think he's going to play a big part in some big new event next year but I'm not really sure as I haven't been paying much attention to that. It was in the DC Free Comic Book Day comic I think. Whether this Question is Vic Sage or not...I have no idea?

 

Hum....this guy seems to have found Mara's catsuit.
(credit: Doug Alexander Gregory, Emperor's Hand)