First the Karate Kid, Next Spiderman?

[frerottenextelway]

Why not let the free market decide it? This is America, right?

[TheReverend]

Originally Posted by GoBroncos84

None of those are really elite franchises. Storm and Bishop are important members of the X-Men universe, but neither is much of a stand alone. Some brief runs as solo comics, at least for Storm. Certainly not on the scale of a Wolverine. The only black super hero that comes to mind that has their own long running series along with film franchise is Spawn. Nothing on the level of a Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Wolverine, etc. Those iconic characters are all white. And even with Spawn, most people wouldn't know his race anyway. He's dead/burned/wearing a suit in every comic panel other than flashbacks before his death.

My only point is that of the elite, iconic, world renowned super heroes that transcend pop culture, every single one of them is white. I assume that will change someday, but it hasn't yet. Even non-comic book fans know who Superman, Batman, etc. are. Non-comic book fans probably don't know who any of the people you listed are.

Nice call. Can't believe I forgot Spawn. Some jerk off stole his #1 issue from me a couple decades ago :/

Anyways, the majority of those iconic characters you mentioned are iconic in large part due to their longevity and were created in a time where race was a MUCH bigger issue than it is today. In fact, i think wolverine (who ****ING SUCKS) is the only one who doesnt pre date the 50s.

I'm not sure comics are even popular with kids today, so who knows if theyre even really making new heroes for that trend to be broken

[TheReverend]

Originally Posted by GoBroncos84

None of those are really elite franchises. Storm and Bishop are important members of the X-Men universe, but neither is much of a stand alone. Some brief runs as solo comics, at least for Storm. Certainly not on the scale of a Wolverine. The only black super hero that comes to mind that has their own long running series along with film franchise is Spawn. Nothing on the level of a Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Wolverine, etc. Those iconic characters are all white. And even with Spawn, most people wouldn't know his race anyway. He's dead/burned/wearing a suit in every comic panel other than flashbacks before his death.

My only point is that of the elite, iconic, world renowned super heroes that transcend pop culture, every single one of them is white. I assume that will change someday, but it hasn't yet. Even non-comic book fans know who Superman, Batman, etc. are. Non-comic book fans probably don't know who any of the people you listed are.

Also, this does bring up an interesting question.

Not coming from the situation, I don't know how big comics were in black culture. If they were popular in black communities, does it mean black kids had no issue identifying with white heroes? Otherwise, I'd have expected someone like Powerman (character that's been around from the 70s with a pretty cool story line) to be significantly more reknowned and iconic than he is.

[El Minion]

Originally Posted by Houshyamama

Those are white people pretending to be other races. John Wayne wasn't trying to be a white Genghis Khan... completely different situation.

I've read Starship Troopers, great book. But an iconic Filipino character he is not.

Wait so it would less of a farce if a black actor in white face played Peter Parker then just having a black actor play Spiderman straight

Al Jolson approves

[Mr. Elway]

Depends on how good the movie is. To do a good remake you have to reimagine the character. I'm not a comic geek so I could care less if Spiderman being black is different than the comic book. Just do something original with the character and make a good movie and I'll enjoy it. I thought the new Karate Kid was an enjoyable flick BTW.

[Rock Chalk]

Originally Posted by sirhcyennek81

To be factual, Jesus was neither white or black.

He would have been similar to modern day arabs.

Jesus was a Jew, so a more accurate depiction would be the Jews of the era which are more akin to Southern Europeans or Eastern Middle Easterners (Syrians, Jordanians, etc).

Arabs and Middle Eastern people are considered white, sharing the same general genetic characteristics of caucasians as opposed to blacks or asians.

but again, this is sidetracking. Jesus, nor Spiderman, are about the race of the person or character. Its about their message. Spidey - or really Peter Parker - had a message about teenage angst and problems of growing up, struggling through puberty, etc. Becoming an adult, and in the meantime being a superhero and juggling his normal life with his hidden life.

Im not for changing Spiderman to a black dude. This isn't about race and it wouldn't matter if Spiderman wasn't such an iconic character. Change Daredevil to a black guy, no one would care. Daredevil is not an iconic character of American fiction. Spiderman is the second most popular superhero of all time trailing ONLY Superman in his awesomeness.

And I agree with Rev, Bishop is one of the coolest Superhero's ever and he is black as was the original Blade from the Comic Books.

I'd have the exact same issues if the roles were reversed. If Spidey was originally black but they wanted to make him white for a new movie after he had been black his whole "life" including the first several movies. Iconic characters should be left as is.

[El Minion]

Those in favor of keeping Spidey white have a friend in Council of Conservative Citizens:

The misguided "Thor" race controversy

The casting of Idris Elba as a Norse god has caused an uproar -- but it's actually part of a Viking movie tradition

By Bob Calhoun


Paramount Pictures
Idris Elba as Heimdall in "Thor"

This piece originally appeared on Bob Calhoun's Open Salon blog.

As of Wednesday morning, 1,483 people liked the "Boycott Thor (2011) by Marvel Studios" Facebook page. Among those showing their virtual disapproval of director Kenneth Branagh's upcoming comic book movie is Elmer Smith of Bradenton, Fla., a "47 year old proud son of the South" with a Confederate flag combined with skull and crossbones as his profile pic. On the Facebook page itself, Ian Tucker writes, "I'll watch this when they remake 'Shaft' with a white guy." Nikola Brdja Spaskeh, assault rifle in hand in his profile image, adds, "Jewlywood, more History, less Political Correctness and Liberal Agenda," before wondering if Hollywood will make a movie with "Will Smith as Adolf Hitler" and bemoaning the stealing of European heritage. There is also a link where you can buy "Boycott Thor" T-shirts, bumper stickers and even aprons on zazzle.com.

The reason for the outrage isn't that Will Smith was cast as the Norse God of Thunder, but because Idris Elba, a British actor of African parentage best known as Stringer Bell on "The Wire," has been chosen to play Heimdall, the steadfast guardian of the rainbow bridge to Asgard. The boycott was organized late last year by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist organization that condemns interracial marriage and refers to blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity." A Dec. 27, 2010, entry on the group's "Boycott Thor" website rages against the multiracial Valhalla depicted in the upcoming movie, and points out that Stan Lee "has personally funded Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy."

"It is very clear where his bias lies," the anonymous author quips.

Surprisingly, African-American fantasy author Charles Saunders, creator of the Sub-Saharan sword and sorcery hero Imaro, weighs in on the side of those who want to keep Heimdall white. "The internal integrity of those mythologies should be acknowledged and respected," he writes in a Jan. 25 blog post titled "The Heimdall Hullabaloo." Saunders' reasons for disparaging an African Heimdall stem from being asked to rework his African-descended characters as Caucasians for a 1985 Roger Corman-produced film called "Amazons." Saunders finds Hollywood cynicism as the motivation for shifting the race of his own characters in the 1980s and Heimdall today. "To my mind there is something wrong with both pictures," Saunders concludes, "and I don't need the likes of the Council of Conservative Citizens or 'Boycott Thor' to tell me that."

But both Saunders and the Council of Conservative Citizens get this all horribly wrong. The casting of Elba has nothing to do with the cultural authenticity of 8th century Scandinavian seafarers, but instead hails from a mid-20th century American cinematic tradition. A few years before the sit-ins and freedom rides or the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Viking movies produced with American stars and financing had started the march toward integration with the casting of Trinidad-born Calypso singer Edric Connor as Sandpiper in the 1958 Kirk Douglas epic "The Vikings." However, Connor's role in "The Vikings" is closer to a slave narrative than a berserker's saga as he and Tony Curtis escape their Norse bondage by stealing a ship and sailing it for England. This one sequence of "The Vikings" has an alarming parallel to "The Defiant Ones," Curtis' other major film of 1958 where he and Sydney Poitier are chained together as they make their getaway from a brutal Southern chain gang.

During the same year that Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, Sydney Poitier's Moorish king in "The Long Ships" (1964) was an antagonistic equal to Richard Widmark's Viking treasure hunter. Poitier and Widmark had already faced off from opposite sides of the color line in the tense racial drama "No Way Out" (1950), which was also Poitier's first film. "The Long Ships" would see the two replaying this conflict only with more sword play and Viking panty raids on Portier's harem. Although the conflict between Moor and Viking is unlikely to upset even the most bigoted "Thor" boycotter, "The Long Ships" shows a reticence on the part of producers to place Vikings in a mono-ethnic setting.

More thorough integration of movie Vikings would have to wait all the way until 1978 with the release of "The Norseman," a bargain basement effort filmed in Florida swampland with Lee Majors wearing a Roman breastplate for some reason and Italian guys in obvious wigs as totally evil Native Americans. As dwindling factory production in America had become integrated during the last throes of organized labor dominance, "The Norseman" gives us NFL hall of famer Deacon Jones in a horned helmet fighting alongside guys with names like Thorvald, Ragnar and Olif. Near the film's conclusion, Jones risks Indian arrows to carry the corpse of a fallen Viking back to the ship because the dead man "deserves a Norse burial." Unfortunately, Jones' character is named Thrall although it's doubtful that a Heimdall of any color would bar his entrance into Valhalla when the time comes.


And now that the U.S. has its first African-American president, we also have black Heimdall standing guard over the Rainbow Bridge, deciding which warriors are worthy of entering a multi-ethnic Asgard like an armor-plated St. Peter. While the 1,483 boycotters clicking on the thumb icon on the "Boycott Thor" Facebook page will hardly matter to the success of Marvel/Paramount's "Thor," Elba still felt the need to answer his critics as recently as last week. In an April 8 interview with Female First, Elba admits to questioning race when Branagh first offered him the role, but later came around. "It was so refreshing -- and a testament to him as an actor and director that his casting was genuinely color blind," Elba said before adding, "I feel very proud of being part of that movie."

What should rankle white supremacists even more is that a New York Jew who fought the Nazis during World War II is responsible for making the Norse Thunder God into a modern superhero. Marvel Comics artist Jack Kirby along with writer Stan Lee first put Thor into a comic book in 1962, and had him doing things that were decidedly inauthentic. During Thor's early four-color adventures, he fought the Stone Men of Saturn, Robert Louis Stevenson's Mr. Hyde, and even the Greek gods. Four years later, Kirby integrated Marvel's characters with the creation of the Black Panther, the first black superhero. "There were plenty of white superheroes, so I thought there should be a black hero too," Kirby told me unpretentiously during one of the times I was fortunate enough to speak with him. After Kirby jumped to DC Comics in the early 1970s, he created that company's first black superhero as well in the debut issue of "The Forever People" (1971). Ironically, that character's name was Vykin the Black.

[Shananahan]

Retrograde. I like that.

[TheReverend]

Originally Posted by El Minion

Those in favor of keeping Spidey white have a friend in Council of Conservative Citizens:

IMO, apples and oranges. Heimdall? I don't even know who that is, and I was an AVID comic reader. Honestly, the only ones I remember from Thor's plot lines were Thor, Loki, Enchantress and Odin.

Saying Heimdall is as iconic a cultural figure as Spiderman deserves a firm slap in the face.

[Shananahan]

If those white supremacists where smart they'd try and convince all of the black actors who want to break into comic book movies to just get a role in Thor.

[gyldenlove]

**** all those racist douchenozzles, none of them have a Scandinavian bone in their bodies and if they don't pipe down I might have to show them what a real viking is like when he visits a foreign country.

Heimdall was a p***Y anyway who cares who plays him? As long as Thor has a massive ****ing hammer and Odin is a one-eyed womanizer with a temper and some animals I don't give a **** about the rest.

God damnit these ****ing southern banjo-playing donkey-****ing sister-loving inbred mouthbreathers piss me off, workshy peons all of them.

[Chris]

Freakshows. Idris Elba would kick their asses.

[TheReverend]

Originally Posted by gyldenlove

**** all those racist douchenozzles, none of them have a Scandinavian bone in their bodies and if they don't pipe down I might have to show them what a real viking is like when he visits a foreign country.

Heimdall was a p***Y anyway who cares who plays him? As long as Thor has a massive ****ing hammer and Odin is a one-eyed womanizer with a temper and some animals I don't give a **** about the rest.

God damnit these ****ing southern banjo-playing donkey-****ing sister-loving inbred mouthbreathers piss me off, workshy peons all of them.

Quoting for awesomeness.

[El Minion]

Too Late, a Black Spiderman :

Marvel: New Ultimate Spider-Man boasts big changes


AP – In this comic book image released by Marvel Comics, a page from 'Ultimate Fallout,' is shown. In the …



By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Matt Moore, Associated Press – Tue Aug 2, 12:07 pm ET

PHILADELPHIA – Peter Parker is dead and gone, but Spider-Man's still slinging webs and fighting crime.

And it's not just a new teenager climbing Manhattan buildings, it's an entirely new crime-fighter, from the color of his suit to the complexion of his skin.

Meet Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Hispanic American teenager who, inspired to do good after the death of Parker at the hands of the Green Goblin, takes flight and has his first fight in the pages of Marvel Comics' "Ultimate Fallout" No. 4, in comic shops on Wednesday.

The Ultimates imprint is separate from Marvel's bigger universe where Parker is alive and well.

Writer Brian Michael Bendis, who has scripted every issue of Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man since it first debuted in 2000 to wide acclaim, maintained a new hero would replace Parker, felled in the pages of "Ultimate Spider-Man" No. 160 this summer.

But as to whom that was a closely guarded secret, until now.

Bendis said that the decision came down to the story, to keep it fresh and vital and new.

Morales, he explained, is nothing like his predecessor.

"He's younger than Peter Parker, he's coming from a completely different background, a completely different world view," Bendis said. "It's Peter Parker's death that inspires this kid to step up."

Bendis said his decision was made before actor Donald Glover's efforts to be considered for next year's Spider-Man film went viral. He had talked it over with Joe Quesada, Marvel's chief creative officer.

"Joe and I talked about it at great length — what if he was an African-American and how interesting it would be," Bendis said.

Later, he saw Glover on the television show "Community," wearing Spider-Man pajamas, and knew he was on the right track.

Making Spider-Man a black character is not a publicity effort, it's reflective of an industry keeping pace with modern society, said Axel Alonso, Marvel's editor-in-chief.

"As someone who grew up on a steady diet of `Luke Cage, Hero For Hire' and `Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu,' I am personally invested," he said.

"This was a conscious decision. Here at Marvel, we pride ourselves on reflecting the real world in all its diversity," Alonso added, adding that Morales' stories would be on par with those of Parker.

"Morales' adventures will be fleshed out in the coming months with the start of "Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man" in September that is being illustrated by Sara Pichelli.

Bendis is excited about the possibilities that Morales brings.

"I'm now sitting with a pile of legitimately new Spider-Man stories to tell and that is the best news a writer could have," he said.

[TheReverend]

Originally Posted by El Minion

Too Late, a Black Spiderman :

Marvel: New Ultimate Spider-Man boasts big changes


AP – In this comic book image released by Marvel Comics, a page from 'Ultimate Fallout,' is shown. In the …



By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Matt Moore, Associated Press – Tue Aug 2, 12:07 pm ET

PHILADELPHIA – Peter Parker is dead and gone, but Spider-Man's still slinging webs and fighting crime.

And it's not just a new teenager climbing Manhattan buildings, it's an entirely new crime-fighter, from the color of his suit to the complexion of his skin.

Meet Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Hispanic American teenager who, inspired to do good after the death of Parker at the hands of the Green Goblin, takes flight and has his first fight in the pages of Marvel Comics' "Ultimate Fallout" No. 4, in comic shops on Wednesday.

The Ultimates imprint is separate from Marvel's bigger universe where Parker is alive and well.

Writer Brian Michael Bendis, who has scripted every issue of Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man since it first debuted in 2000 to wide acclaim, maintained a new hero would replace Parker, felled in the pages of "Ultimate Spider-Man" No. 160 this summer.

But as to whom that was a closely guarded secret, until now.

Bendis said that the decision came down to the story, to keep it fresh and vital and new.

Morales, he explained, is nothing like his predecessor.

"He's younger than Peter Parker, he's coming from a completely different background, a completely different world view," Bendis said. "It's Peter Parker's death that inspires this kid to step up."

Bendis said his decision was made before actor Donald Glover's efforts to be considered for next year's Spider-Man film went viral. He had talked it over with Joe Quesada, Marvel's chief creative officer.

"Joe and I talked about it at great length — what if he was an African-American and how interesting it would be," Bendis said.

Later, he saw Glover on the television show "Community," wearing Spider-Man pajamas, and knew he was on the right track.

Making Spider-Man a black character is not a publicity effort, it's reflective of an industry keeping pace with modern society, said Axel Alonso, Marvel's editor-in-chief.

"As someone who grew up on a steady diet of `Luke Cage, Hero For Hire' and `Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu,' I am personally invested," he said.

"This was a conscious decision. Here at Marvel, we pride ourselves on reflecting the real world in all its diversity," Alonso added, adding that Morales' stories would be on par with those of Parker.

"Morales' adventures will be fleshed out in the coming months with the start of "Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man" in September that is being illustrated by Sara Pichelli.

Bendis is excited about the possibilities that Morales brings.

"I'm now sitting with a pile of legitimately new Spider-Man stories to tell and that is the best news a writer could have," he said.

Pfffffffffft. Alternate universe filth.

[cutthemdown]

Originally Posted by Dagmar

Why does his race make a difference to the character of Spiderman?

Because black people can already do all that stuff. White boys need to get bitten by a spider to fly like Jordan.

[UberBroncoMan]

Originally Posted by TheReverend

Pfffffffffft. Alternate universe filth.

Actually he's Latin/Hispanic and Black with a last name of Morales. Might as well knock two out.

[Punisher]

Originally Posted by FADERPROOF

Does black spiderman still have a white girlfriend? Or do they change all chracter protrayals?

lmao!

[TheReverend]

Originally Posted by UberBroncoMan

Actually he's Latin/Hispanic and Black with a last name of Morales. Might as well knock two out.

In b4 Jewish-Asian Harry Osborn.

[redrocket]

theres always conflict trying to make comics into movies. I say lets see how it goes.

[hookemhess]

Originally Posted by redrocket

theres always conflict trying to make comics into movies. I say lets see how it goes.

Dude, who are you digging up all these old ass threads with only 20-something posts?

[Bronco Yoda]

I didn't read past the 1st page.

I don't see a problem with a black Spiderman. Just as long as you keep him as nerdy smart quiet kid. What's the difference?