On the subject of black Spider-Man, female Thor and gay Iceman.

A little late to this party, but I realized that while I've had thoughts regarding Marvel's recent change up of some of it's more iconic characters, I've never really written them down, or even shared then with like-minded geeks.

Character demographics are a funny thing in my mind.  You can change some of them around without much fuss (the modern and *very* African-American Nick Fury) and some seem, well, just weird.  I don't mind there being Black/Asian/Latino characters as powerful as Superman or Thor, but to go back and re-write history so that Clark Kent was really Carlos Cervantes, or that Wonder Woman came from an African tribe... well, it would seem kind of forced.  I'm not against switching up skin color or gender as a rule.  I let the Marvel Cinematic do it's thing - I actually really like Sam Jackson as Fury, and Idris Elba as Heimdall.  And as someone who occasionally frequents the opera house, I'm used to characters being played by people of different hues (gender swapping is also pretty commonplace, given the recent lack of castrati).


There is only *one* big problem with changing up the genders/ethnicity/orientation of major characters, and it's this:  No matter how you slice it, taking straight white male icons and changing them into something else defeats the purpose.  It's not a bad thing to live in a world where there is a black Spider-Man (and it's great for black and latino kids) but wouldn't we rather live in a world where those icons didn't have to be straight white males to begin with?  To me gender/ethnicity/orientation swapping just confirms the idea that the road to icon-dom is attainable by a select demographic, and anyone outside of those parameters who wants to reach the end has to let someone else do most of the walking.

So I applaud Marvel and DC for at least trying to do the right thing, I'm just not sure it's the best way to go.