GAWDAMMIT! There's black people in mah comic books!

Sutremaine wrote:

bleachedblackcat wrote:

If you want less male/hetrosexual/males then I think you should make one up, not just randomly change the race of someone.

Only if you could be confident that they'd attain the popularity of those other straight/white/male characters. You can make all the 'alternative' characters you like, but until the buying public stop thinking of the archetypical superhero as being a straight white muscular Christian male then the popular characters will continue to be of that mould.

Unfortunately, the buying public won't start thinking of people outside the mould as heroes unless they're presented with such characters, and they won't unless these characters become popular. Catch-22.

Yep. So that leaves making casting decisions according to the available actors and not the way the characters look.

Azzandra wrote:

Sutremaine wrote:

bleachedblackcat wrote:

If you want less male/hetrosexual/males then I think you should make one up, not just randomly change the race of someone.

Only if you could be confident that they'd attain the popularity of those other straight/white/male characters. You can make all the 'alternative' characters you like, but until the buying public stop thinking of the archetypical superhero as being a straight white muscular Christian male then the popular characters will continue to be of that mould.

Unfortunately, the buying public won't start thinking of people outside the mould as heroes unless they're presented with such characters, and they won't unless these characters become popular. Catch-22.

Personally, I think this is why we have to look to Image comics.

Unlike Marvel and DC, Image doesn't have an... erm... image to uphold or protect. It's rife for experimentation, and even has established series that can be used for this, specifically: Invincible. Which is a perfect place to not only introduce, but engage with and serve as a launching point for characters like this. (They may have already done this, I hope they have, I'm only through to the end of Vol 4, and all I can see is potential (and occasionally crummy artwork, but each to their own).

Once a smaller company proves that LGBT characters can be accepted by the comic reading community and can be proven to work well on their own, there'll be less of an excuse, and even an incentive for Marvel and DC to publish their own LGBT characters.

That's just me thinking aloud anyway.