The race of superheroes

The new Black-Hispanic Spider-Man seems to have all comicdom in a frenzy and heated debate about diversity, racism, and comic book continuity. The fact is that changing the race/gender of a character for a while is nothing new (see below), creating an “ethnic” version of a popular character is a gimmick being used for decades, and these things are not the same as creating new multicultural characters that are strong on their own and not a stand-in. Still, it should help sell some more books. And if anybody should do it, Brian Michael Bendis is the man for the task, him being the ultimate Spider-Man guy for the past 10 years.

Meanwhile the ugly and embarrassing battle between Marvel Comics and the late comics master Jack Kirby rages on, with Marvel temporarily winning the tug of war over who has the rights over Kirby’s creations: the artist himself or the company who paid him to do it. The fate of characters like Spider-Man hilmself, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Thor, The X-Men, The Avengers, Ant-Man, Nick Fury and The Rawhide Kid hang on the line.

And while the Spider-Man musical continues to be enmeshed in controversy over its future, leave it to Bono to upstage the superhero.