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Should comics be political?
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The best way to introduce diversity in Marvel Comics

In recent years, Marvel has retired a lot of traditional superheroes and replaced them with a younger and more diverse group.
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The Argument

There is nothing inherently wrong with a push for diversity in comic books. This is a political agenda that accurately represents the real world. However, replacing "legacy" characters like Peter Parker's Spider-Man with Miles Morales is pushing a political agenda by shoehorning diverse characters into comics.[1] So, rather than replacing iconic heroes with younger, more diverse ones, these diverse heroes should be given their own superhero identities and powers.[2] Keeping the original heroes while also introducing new, diverse heroes helps build on the history of the medium. Almost nothing is sacrificed as well-established characters remain in the comic universe. A lot is gained though, in the form of more relatable characters and a more realistic world.

Counter arguments

While there have been a couple instances of "shoehorning" diverse characters into comics, there are more instances of a logical character inheritance of an identity. For example, Marvel created an entire universe devoted to diverse versions of beloved characters. Later, they wrote a storyline which saw some characters, like Miles Morales' Spider-Man, move permanently to the central marvel universe. This shows an attempt to establish characters before bringing them to the central comic book universe, rather than a random insertion to further a political agenda.

Premises

[P1]Diversifying established characters is political. [P2]Keeping established characters and creating entirely new diverse characters is the correct way to be political.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Replacing the original heroes with diverse ones is the correct way to bring diversity into comics.

References

  1. https://bleedingcool.com/comics/recent-updates/politics-out-marvel-superhero-comics-please/
  2. https://lawliberty.org/is-political-correctness-hurting-marvel-comics/
This page was last edited on Friday, 15 May 2020 at 00:20 UTC