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## Identity Politics and Representation in Comics

Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

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Grek
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Post by Grek » Fri Nov 06, 2015 10:25 am

The theft accusation is because A] the justification for Sam Wilson replacing Steve Rogers as Captain America is that Rogers literally gets the Super Serum that gives him his powers physically stolen from him by Iron Nail, and B] upon becoming Captain America, Sam Wilson loses his old personality and starts acting like a body swapped Steve Rogers. I'm sure you can see how both of those, but especially the second one, are problematic.
Even setting aside the implication that a black character can't be successful character unless he unfailingly mimics a more experienced white character, removing Steve Rogers is implicitly saying that that Sam Wilson is second fiddle and only being allowed to be Captain America because the apparently preferable white version is no longer available. Its really offensive if you stop to think about it. And yes, you get the same sexist implications with Jane Foster only being allowed to become Thor after the original Thor quits and develops a drinking problem.
If you want to do a good hand-off of the Captain America title (or the Thor title), you have to do it in a way that makes the new incarnation of the hero equal to the old one, not just a sub-par replacement. But you also need to separate the new and old incarnations so that they're either not in the same story, or can be distinguished unambiguously when in a scene together. If you want to do that for Captain America, it probably means having an established character get injected with Super Serum and get recruited to help fight against terrorists abroad. If you want to do that for Thor, that probably means giving Thor a good reason to give up Mjolnir which in turn means giving Thor something very important to do somewhere that isn't Earth.

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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Fri Nov 06, 2015 10:52 am

Wow. Grek you really are getting yourself confused and churning out even more stupid statements FAST there aren't you?
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CaptainComics
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Post by CaptainComics » Fri Nov 06, 2015 2:16 pm

> PhoneLobster wrote: I was prepared to put you in a separate camp, but with that little line you don't get to be in some better rational, not crazy racist/sexist camp, you get to be in the same camp as FatR, Darkmaster and Sacrificial Lamb.

I don't intend to make a habit of responding to this kind of thing, but I am going to address this briefly now.
First of all, I thought this was the Gaming Den, where hyperbole was a thing people did to make their posts more entertaining while making their point. Do I think a fictional character actually stole something from another fictional character? No. Do I think minorities are thieves? No. In these instances, the identities were passed off from one character to another in a way that is not fun or entertaining, but instead frustrating and insulting to all parties. And the people I really blame are the writers and editors (and to a certain lesser extent the artists - that new Captain America costume is a real eyesore!) who have no interest in maintaining the illusion that the characters have a point of view or consistent personality and instead simply have them do or say whatever is convenient for the current storyline. Which will be retconned in six months anyway.
The thing is, while character replacement in comics is relatively common when compared to other media, when compared with comics in general it happens relatively infrequently. This is the largest crop of such events since the birth of the Silver Age when Barry Allen became the Flash and Hal Jordan became Green Lantern. And they are generally being done in a manner that is generally bad. I will eventually get around to talking about other replacements, such as Kyle Rayner, who, despite him being usually drawn as white, is canonically of mixed race and is therefore an excellent example of a minority character replacement done right - and an example of it done wrong, depending on which comics you were reading at the time.

> PhoneLobster wrote:Because Sam Wilson is (at least) the fifth fucking Captain America, and nobody is in this thread is complaining how any of the other three dudes stole anything from Steve Rogers - even though the most recent not-Steve Cap undid more than 40 years of publication history worth of continuity.

Clearly, if a new poster hasn't stated an opinion, you can just make one up for them, right? I haven't complained about the other replacement Caps because they're out of the scope of the discussion of representation in comics and how it can be done right and done wrong. But guess what? Bucky stole the identity too. Now, again, I don't think the character "did" anything, but the writer produced a story in which a number of elements were insufficiently justified in such a way that an identity handoff happened that should have been handled better. In fact, I would argue that if we were going to have the Falcon become Cap, he should have done it at the time Bucky did - despite Brubaker's other failings as a writer at the time, he at least managed to make Sam distinct from Steve Rogers personality-wise.
My opinions on comics (individual issues, entire storylines, and the medium as a whole) are nuanced and complex, as befits the material at its best. There are a lot of stories and a lot of issues, and no one has read them all. My explanations on a message board are necessarily composed with an audience in mind that is familiar at best with a slightly different subset of comics and at worst is only passingly familiar with the movie and tv versions of these characters. I can't spend my time cataloging every single event that was in some way similar to what I was talking about and compare and contrast them - I would quickly wear out my welcome here.
I don't mind my ideas being critiqued. That's pretty much why I started posting here, to see what other people thought about the things I had to say. But I don't expect to go running down a rabbit hole every time somebody jumps to a conclusion based on the limited information I can fit into a post. It's hard enough keeping posts on topic when almost every little detail has in its background a complex series of continuity snarls, self-references, and alternate universe duplicates that used to be canon but as of the latest event have been retconned away due to fifth-dimensional imps interfering with mutant DNA. It's honestly difficult to find a place to stop explaining.
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erik
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Post by erik » Fri Nov 06, 2015 2:52 pm

Sounds reasonable, Capn.
While I like the notion of converting characters into a more diverse cast, that doesn't mean that sometimes it isn't done shittily which ruins the process. I didn't see any reason to dogpile on Capn' for calling the it "stealing" when it was poorly done. I'll give the benefit of the doubt until someone says truly stupid and offensive shit like FatR or LambSac.
If you get strawmanned it's okay to ignore the offender. That rabbit hole goes deep if you try to follow it to its end.
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Stahlseele
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Post by Stahlseele » Fri Nov 06, 2015 3:02 pm

Why has Steve Rogers decided to quit anyway? He can be the new Falcon.
Look at the Buzzard or just give him the Iron Patriot Armor.
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> Shrapnel wrote:

> > TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
> > Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Fri Nov 06, 2015 3:31 pm

> Stahlseele wrote:Why has Steve Rogers decided to quit anyway? He can be the new Falcon.
> Look at the Buzzard or just give him the Iron Patriot Armor.

As someone with only a passing familiarity, wasn't he like, super weak and shitty. Maybe the Patriot Armor would be fine, but I don't think he could manage the Falcon without dying.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

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Stahlseele
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Post by Stahlseele » Fri Nov 06, 2015 3:34 pm

Minor Correction, not Buzzard, Vulture <.<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture_%28comics%29
He was an old man when he started his career.
Just get one of the old Vulture Harnesses that grant flight and enhanced strength, change the outfit to look more like the falcon or something captain americany and done.
Welcome, to IronHell.

> Shrapnel wrote:

> > TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
> > Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.

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CaptainComics
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Post by CaptainComics » Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:07 pm

> Stahlseele wrote:Why has Steve Rogers decided to quit anyway? He can be the new Falcon.

That would actually be kind of fun, but also touches on another element of this whole thing that is strange. So when the Falcon first took over as Captain America, Steve was literally a decrepit old man. Like, rail-thin, haggard, stooped, walks with a cane, all that jazz. Right now there's a line-wide event going on called Secret Wars which is significantly late, which means that some books that happen after it are currently being released while the event is going to take a few more months to finish, and as a result exactly what happens/happened/is going to happen in what order is hard even for me to keep track of. All this is to say that I don't know exacty when or how this happens, but Steve Rogers is going to end up/has ended up partially rejuvenated - he's big and muscular again, but his hair is still white and he's got a bunch of wrinkles he didn't have before. And he is still not going to be Captain America.
So why did he quit? I don't know. He didn't quit the last time he had a super-soldier-serum related meltdown, caused by a complicated plot by the Red Skull. He kept fighting and got himself rejuvenated. And we can conclude that his reason to quit being Cap was not that he couldn't pull his weight as an old man, because now he's still an old man and still being a superhero, but not Captain America for some reason. It's not a political statement this time, like when he went by The Captain for a while when the government decided to fire him as Captain America, or the time when his citizenship was revoked due to a plot by the Machinesmith.
Again, it's yet another part of why this is poorly done, because the reasons for the characters to make the decisions that they do is not at all clear, where past stories where similar themes were explored and similar choices made were very clear and easy to understand. Perhaps there will be some brilliant bit of writing that makes this make sense when Steve gets partially rejuvenated, but based on the track record of the creators and Marvel as a company at this point, I do not expect that at all. I instead expect to see a hand-wave in the direction of the issue and for it then to be completely ignored.
But old Steve Rogers in a red Vulture costume, side by side with his old partner Sam living up to his legacy in the star-spangled outfit is an idea that I could get behind, provided it was done well. I'd definitely check out a What If? with that as the premise.

> Grek wrote:...(R)emoving Steve Rogers is implicitly saying that that Sam Wilson is second fiddle and only being allowed to be Captain America because the apparently preferable white version is no longer available.

There's a particular element to the Cap/Falcon dynamic that I think is important, and importantly distorted with the current storyline - Falcon was Cap's partner, not his sidekick. It's not like Batman and Robin, where the natural story that everyone knows will happen "someday" is that Batman eventually dies or gets too old and his young protege who is his figurative (and in certain cases literal) son carries on the legacy. Falcon was a grown man when he teamed up with Cap, and crafted his own identity that carried its own meaning. He's not Cap Jr., he's not Bucky XVII, he's not Flag Boy - he's the Falcon. So while from a certain perspective, having Falcon take over for Cap is a signal that Sam is good enough to live up to what Captain America has come to symbolize, from another perspective it minimizes who the Falcon is and what he could mean as a symbol.
Having the Falcon incorporate the shield into his array of weapons while keeping his own identity would allow him to have the gravitas and legacy element - if you are entrusted with Cap's shield, it's almost as big a deal as being able to lift Thor's hammer - while affirming his own identity as important and significant, rather than diminishing it.

> Omegonthesane wrote:CaptainComics - while I would not be surprised if you've already gon there, are there any cases in general of a new guy permanently assuming the mantle of an old superhero and the previous holder being out of the picture?
> If not, why was it wrong for Kyle Rayner or Wally West to spend decades, plural, as in at least two - AKA long enough to have a generation of fans grow up with them as a thing to identify with in the mythos - holding the title of Green Lantern or Flash?
> If so, how were these executed in a way that didn't insult the old legacy the way "Thor Odinson is now a helpless drunk" insults his legacy?
> EDIT: Also, how about the previous Captain America handovers?

I will address this a bit later. I'll give a rundown on previous legacy heroes, what I think worked and didn't work, and how they differ from the modern attempts. This will specifically include Flash, GL, and Captain America, and also guys like the Atom, Starman, and Ant-Man.
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Stahlseele
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Post by Stahlseele » Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:16 pm

So, i think your writing assignment for the Dens Comics History has become a bit longer by now than you initially expected ^^
Still being an old and thin and weak man never stopped Adrian Thoomes, and he had not had the advantage of Military Training at all.
I mean, Cap still KEEPS his Tactical mastermind of experience and Inspirational Character right? RIGHT?
Give him a modified Vulture / Falcon Gear, Call him American Eagle, patriotic as all fuck and glorious and all that shit!
And it'd give him even more ways to throw his shield at somebody too . .
I seriously hope they have a good reason for him simply up and quitting.
Steve Rogers NEVER QUIT. Even when he as stupidly Racist about it sometimes. ("Do you think this A stands for France?").
Hell, even as an old weak fart, he could still be used in a role like Oracle after Batgirl got crippled <.<
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Teaching if not directly Training newbs in Avenger Mansion or maybe even in Xaviers School for gifted Youths. If they trust/allow him in . .

> Powers and abilities
> Utilizing his harness, the Vulture is able to fly as if by natural winged flight. He wears a costume of synthetic stretch fabric housing a tailored electromagnetic harness with bird-like wings attached beneath the arms. This consists of an electromagnetic anti-graviton generator worn on his body as a harness enabling him to fly silently with precise maneuverability. The harness also increases his resistance to injury to the point that he can survive blows from Spider-Man's enhanced strength despite his age. Another by-product of his exposure to the harness is that despite his age and lack of exercise, his physical strength represents the upper limit of human development. When he removes the harness some of his enhanced abilities slowly fade, although the rate at which this transpires remains unclear (some writers have suggested that his strength is permanent). The Vulture is elderly and depends on his electromagnetic harness to augment his strength, vitality, and athletic prowess as well as absorbing life force to maintain his vitality. It has recently been revealed that, due to his prolonged use of the harness, the Vulture can levitate or float his body even without the harness, although he requires his wings to maneuver while airborne.

Aside from the draining life ability, Stark Tech and this being around means nobody with the ressources and will to fight has to be a normal human anymore <.<
Last edited by Stahlseele on Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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> Shrapnel wrote:

> > TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
> > Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.

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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History » Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:45 pm

Uh...Steve Rogers has totally quit before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_A ... s_to_1990s
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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca » Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:00 pm

The first time he quit was because he found out that Nixon was head o the Secret Empire.
The second time was when Congress pointed out that the Captain America identity, shield, and costume was property of the American government and if he wanted to keep them then he'd have to work for the government. Since he didn't trust the government, that was a deal breaker.
In both cases, the point was that the identity didn't matter. The costume didn't matter. The Shield didn't matter. All that mattered was the ideals that they stood for. Nomad was still Captain America. The Captain was still Captain America. The replacements very much went Captain America. They were merely pawns of the government that hired them.
Bucky and Falcon, though, are different. Both were chosen by Steve to take his place and expected to uphold those ideals at a time when he simply couldn't fight, due to being dead and being old, respectively.
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Stahlseele
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Post by Stahlseele » Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:00 pm

> Ancient History wrote:Uh...Steve Rogers has totally quit before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_A ... s_to_1990s

If you mean this: "Rogers chooses instead to resign his identity,[105][106] and then takes the alias of "the Captain"" then that does not sound like quitting to me O.o
Last edited by Stahlseele on Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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> Shrapnel wrote:

> > TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
> > Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.

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virgil
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Post by virgil » Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:05 pm

> Stahlseele wrote:Aside from the draining life ability, Stark Tech and this being around means nobody with the ressources and will to fight has to be a normal human anymore <.<

To be honest, this is a common issue. Superheroes are remarkably tight-fisted and static with their super tech. I still wonder why Steve Rogers never commonly carried a firearm, because it's not like he's got Batman's code against them. Besides, the "bullets kill, invulnerable trashcan lids make nap nap" excuse rings rather hollow in the face of how many nonlethal technologies he can access?
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Stahlseele
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Post by Stahlseele » Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:07 pm

He was in the military. He totally carried a Gun in WWII.
No idea why that ever changed to be honest . .
Hell, Batman carried a gun for some time <.<
Last edited by Stahlseele on Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Welcome, to IronHell.

> Shrapnel wrote:

> > TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
> > Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.

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Post by Omegonthesane » Fri Nov 06, 2015 8:50 pm

Captain America uses a gun in the film 'verse, certainly in his own films.

> Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Post by virgil » Fri Nov 06, 2015 8:56 pm

> Omegonthesane wrote:Captain America uses a gun in the film 'verse, certainly in his own films.

In the War, sure. After he's thawed out, he doesn't carry, and only really uses them occasionally when picking them off of unconscious bad guys.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:24 pm

> CaptainComics wrote:First of all, I thought this was the Gaming Den, where hyperbole was a thing

Bullshit. That line wasn't hyperbole or even an attempt at it and we both know it.
What it very clearly was by content and context was an attempted succinct and to the point summary of your position that you were excessively waffling over to attempt to excuse it's "coincidental" near identical nature to that held by FatR and Darkmaster and friends.
It was also, quite frankly a pretty clear cut dog whistle.

> Do I think a fictional character actually stole something from another fictional character? No. Do I think minorities are thieves? No. In these instances, the identities were passed off from one character to another in a way that is not fun or entertaining, but instead frustrating and insulting to all parties.

Actually you basically flat out said that (just by "coincidence") all the minority characters that got their superhero identity off anyone other than another minority character had stolen it.
And even if you want to back down from the basic fact that you "accidentally" said that. You still have to deal with the fact that your entire argument basically still amounts to "I just coincidentally happen to think that changes in super hero secret identities are bad wrong whenever minorities get them off white men, for reasons that are so unclear it takes hundreds and thousands of words to articulate them in which I will accidentally dog whistle the same racist opinions as FatR and friends!"

> The thing is, while character replacement in comics is relatively common when compared to other media, when compared with comics in general it happens relatively infrequently. This is the largest crop of such events since the birth of the Silver Age when Barry Allen became the Flash and Hal Jordan became Green Lantern.

I'd say citation needed. Because I severely doubt your claim actually, hell at this point I don't trust ANY fucking thing you have to say about comics. But even aside from that, who the fuck cares?

> And they are generally being done in a manner that is generally bad.

Yeah, a manner in which a minority gets a white man hero mask. You make it pretty clear that that is the consistent thing which makes you upset. You just want to pretend it's "coincidentally" all bad writing caused by some sort of vast conspiracy or dark age comics writing in the midst of what is probably by the simple nature of economic progress the most well funded largest pool of talent the industry has ever seen.

> I will eventually get around to talking about other replacements, such as Kyle Rayner, who, despite him being usually drawn as white, is canonically of mixed race and is therefore an excellent example of a minority character replacement done right - and an example of it done wrong, depending on which comics you were reading at the time.

Holy fuck. You couldn't be parodied if I tried it.

> Captain Comics wrote:

> > PhoneLobster wrote:Because Sam Wilson is (at least) the fifth fucking Captain America, and nobody is in this thread is complaining how any of the other three dudes stole anything from Steve Rogers - even though the most recent not-Steve Cap undid more than 40 years of publication history worth of continuity.

Not only do you still have nothing sane to respond to that fine point with other than waffle and bullshit and excuses. But notably. That isn't my quote.
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Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:43 pm

PL, if your hypothesis were to hold water, it would require that CaptainComics be absolutely fine with the handover of the Captain America title to Bucky Barnes, a white heterosexual American.

> But guess what? Bucky stole the identity too.

See also the explicit approval for the events that led to there being a spare Ms Marvel slot for Kamala Khan - namely, the female Carol Danvers holding the position of Captain Marvel, which was previously only held by men.

> Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Post by PhoneLobster » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:51 pm

> Omegonthesane wrote:PL, if your hypothesis were to hold water, it would require that CaptainComics be absolutely fine with the handover of the Captain America title to Bucky Barnes, a white heterosexual American.

It's a post hoc lame excuse, much as his "But my best friend is a Muslim Female Superhero!" justification.
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Post by Grek » Fri Nov 06, 2015 11:48 pm

Yeah, PL's just a big fan of getting massively butthurt and calling everyone who disagrees with him racists/sexists/rapists/retarded/conservative/a piece of shit. It doesn't even matter how tenuous the claim is, as soon as PL gets the chance he goes for it because he doesn't ever have real arguments, just reactionary logorrhea.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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MGuy
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Post by MGuy » Sat Nov 07, 2015 2:35 am

> PhoneLobster wrote:

> > Omegonthesane wrote:PL, if your hypothesis were to hold water, it would require that CaptainComics be absolutely fine with the handover of the Captain America title to Bucky Barnes, a white heterosexual American.

> It's a post hoc lame excuse, much as his "But my best friend is a Muslim Female Superhero!" justification.

Can you actually quote Cptn giving implied legitimacy to every non minority, non female, comic character switches? Saclamb may be the blowhorn but you can quote him being specifically against the political agenda behind the more diverse crop of heroes. Taking the "stolen" line as irrefutable proof that his entire presentation is a smoke screen is not very convincing. I'd rather just ask Captain, for the sake of defending his ideas, about if there is a list of bad replacement cis white males who have taken over positions, titles or whatever in comic books. Even when I was reading comics regularly I've never been familiar with popular opinions on older bait and switches done on longer running heroes and villains. I can say that there has been some decrying the new batman and joker replacements so I know that it can happen even among white cis male characters. Even the Avatar (tlab) caught flak for lack of ethnicity as did whatever Egypt movie.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.

> MGuy wrote:Finally a thread about fighters!

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Sacrificial Lamb
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Post by Sacrificial Lamb » Sat Nov 07, 2015 2:38 am

> Grek wrote:Yeah, PL's just a big fan of getting massively butthurt and calling everyone who disagrees with him racists/sexists/rapists/retarded/conservative/a piece of shit. It doesn't even matter how tenuous the claim is, as soon as PL gets the chance he goes for it because he doesn't ever have real arguments, just reactionary logorrhea.

Pretty much. PL's particular brand of butthurt verbal diarrhea doesn't make him any more enlightened than anyone else in this thread.
As far as I'm concerned, co-opting pre-existing LEGACY comic book characters with minority replacements is done by comic book companies for three possible reasons:
(1.) To cynically pander to "progressive" SJW butthurt assholes, who are incapable of creating their own comics.....and want to ERASE pre-existing "cisgendered white male characters" (for muh social justice!), rather than create entirely NEW MINORITY CHARACTERS from scratch, THAT HAVE THEIR OWN UNIQUE IDENTITIES.
(2.) Or to make the mainstream superheroes feel more "progressively inclusive" and "accessible" to these self-same assholes, simply because the comic book writer is one of those assholes himself.....and he knows that he doesn't possess the ability to create entirely new minority characters that people genuinely care about. Because creating good characterization via great writing and great visual design is hard to do.
(3.) Or it's just CYNICALLY done to shake up the status quo, in order to generate more sales.
Whatever the reasons for it, it's a disservice to fans of these characters, and it is also lazy writing.
PhoneLobster's point of view makes him a lot like those assholes, because if you dare object to CYNICAL MARKETING PLOYS and progressively-biased POLITICAL PROPAGANDA that often ignores prior characterization, continuity, and more.....and that is intended to appeal to "progressive" SJW assholes obsessed with IDENTITY POLITICS, then you are labeled as SEXIST/RACIST/MISOGYNIST/HOMOPHOBIC/ETC.
It's a lazy and dishonest way to debate, purely for the sake of winning faux "Internet Superior Morality Points". So yeah, PL.....you can fuck right off with that shit.
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CaptainComics
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Post by CaptainComics » Sat Nov 07, 2015 4:12 am

Oh boy. Look, I support the creation of new minority heroes. I support attempts to give existing minority heroes a media and marketing "push." And I don't believe that it's as simple as telling creators to "just make good new characters," because I recognize that it's actually really bad business sense for a creator at Marvel to create new IP that is then owned by Marvel/Disney and the creator gets no slice of the enormous movie, tv, and merchandise pie. It's better for creators to save their good ideas and use them in creator-owned work, because then they can sell licensing rights themselves. However, yes, in my opinion, the majority of the hero replacements being done right now are handled poorly and do a disservice both to the hero being replaced and the hero doing the replacing. If the new Thor was a mystery MAN instead of a mystery WOMAN, I would still dislike the way that the transition was handled. If the new Captain America was Jack Monroe or Rick Jones and they suddenly started speechifying and got handed leadership of every Avengers team over people like the Wasp and the Scarlet Witch, I would still think it was terrible. I hope that people will look at my arguments, and at the work being discussed, and see whether they agree or disagree with my assessments. From here on, I will let my posts speak for themselves, and I will no longer respond to attempts to dismiss my points - after all, even if I am racist, I'm still talking about storytelling points and techniques that can be discussed apart from my own character or lack thereof.
Moving on.
There have been a lot of comic book characters who have been replaced, supplanted, or succeeded over the years, and almost every one has its own unique cluster of causes, effects, and controversies. I made a list of 25 identities off the top of my head that have changed hands over the years, most of them multiple times - by the way, that's only counting Hank Pym once. To begin with, I will present that list, and then follow up with an in-depth look at one legacy in particular, the Green Lantern. Future posts will examine others on the list.
Each heroic identity is followed by all of the individuals to bear that identity that I'm aware of, starting with the originator and then following in no particular order.
Heroes who have been replaced include:
The Atom - Al Pratt, Ray Palmer, Ryan Choi, kinda-sorta Al Rothstein/Nuklon/Atom Smasher
Starman - Ted Knight, David Knight, Mikaal Tomas, Prince Gavyn, Will Payton, Jack Knight, Thom Kallor, kinda-sorta Courtney Whitmore/Star-Spangled Kid/Stargirl
Hourman - Rex Tyler, Rick Tyler, an android from the 853rd century
Dr. Mid-Nite - Charles McNider, Beth Chapel, Pieter Cross
Wildcat - Ted Grant, Yolanda Montez, Tom Bronson
Batman - Bruce Wayne, Jean Paul Valley, Dick Grayson, Terry McGinnis, kinda-sorta Tim Drake/Robin/Red Robin/Batman Beyond II, James Gordon (can you believe it?)
Green Arrow - Ollie Queen, Connor Hawke
Black Canary - Diana Lance, Dinah Lance
Red Tornado - Ma Hunkel, John Smith, kinda-sorta Maxine Hunkel/Cyclone
Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics) - Mar-Vell, Monica Rambeau, Genis-Vell, Phyla-Vell, Carol Danvers
Ms. Marvel - Caol Danvers, Sharon Ventura, Kamala Khan
Aquaman - Arthur Curry/Orin, another guy called Arthur Curry who was different
Aqualad - Garth, Kaldur'ahm/Jackson Hyde (equivalent characters in two different continuities)
Steel/Man of Steel - John Henry Irons, Natasha Irons
Green Lantern - Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz, kinda-sorta Jennie-Lynn Hayden
Ant-Man - Hank Pym, Scott Lang, Eric O'Grady
Goliath - Hank Pym, Clint Barton, Bill Foster
Yellowjacket - Hank Pym, Rita DeMara
Wasp - Janet Van Dyne, Hank Pym
Flash - Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West, Bart Allen
Captain America - Steve Rogers, William Naslund, Jeffrey Mace, William Burnside, John Walker, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson
Robin - Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Damian Wayne, kinda-sorta Carrie Kelley
Wonder Woman - Diana Prince, Hippolyta, Artemis, kinda-sorta Cassie Sandsmark, kinda-sorta Donna Troy, kinda-sorta Nubia, kinda-sorta Orana
Superman - Clark Kent/Kal-El, Connor Kent/Kon-El/The Kid/Superboy, John Henry Irons/Man of Steel/Steel, David Connor/Last Son of Krypton/Eradicator, Hank Henshaw/Man of Tomorrow/the Cyborg/Cyborg-Superman
Batgirl - Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, Helena Bertinelli, Stephanie Brown
Blue Beetle - Dan Garrett, Ted Kord, Jaime Reyes
Phew!
Up next - who is Green Lantern, who was Green Lantern, and what's the deal with Kyle Rayner?
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sat Nov 07, 2015 4:16 am

Sacrificial Lamb, no one will give a shit about what you have to say until your argument is more than "b-b-but spiderman used to be white!" Again, your argument is "separate drinking fountains for everyone," where for some ridiculous reason it is completely okay to reinvent characters as long as they keep the same gender, skin color, and sexual preference, because those are apparently the parts of the character you consider truly important.
It is blatantly bigoted. Yes, you're a run-of-the-mill shitbag, everyone knows it, move on. If you are not broadly offended by new characters replacing old characters but are specifically offended by new minority characters replacing old straight white male characters, you're the worst kind of asshole.
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AndreiChekov
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Post by AndreiChekov » Sat Nov 07, 2015 5:12 am

There is a way to dislike those changes without being bigoted, though. I rarely read anything that doesn't have a straight male protagonist, because i am a straight male person, and I find it difficult to relate to people that aren't. I still occasionally read things that have female protagonists, but that is a more like looking at something in the zoo than gaining any actual investment in the story.
I don't watch/read anything with gay sex in it, because I find it gross, and I would be annoyed if one of my favourite shows suddenly had that in it.
Anyway, my actual point is that people can dislike things because of any reason, and that is actually, perfectly fine. However, if they decide to start stabbing people because of it, then it is a problem.
Peace favour your sword.
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