Marvel’s Strange Treatment Of Its Black Characters

You know, for a company that wants to give black people someone to cheer for and “see themselves” in (something that I can’t follow because I’ve seen myself in robots, dogs, and things that don’t exist in our world since the surface view of my white butt doesn’t define me), Marvel kind of sucks at it.

First we get Black Panther…and then he dies off-screen so they can replace him with his sister “to honor Chadwick Boseman“, as if Shuri couldn’t be a good character without that branding. Then Sam Wilson is turned into Captain America because the comics and studio both thought Falcon wasn’t a strong character and needed the Captain America branding. Miles Morales gets brought into the main Marvel universe while everyone else in the original Ultimate Universe died for not being a replacement, but despite being in the original Spider-Man universe still tries to use that branding alongside Peter. Sensing a pattern? It’s all about the Name, having the right brand to promote the character…despite much of the MCU’s most popular brands existing for decades in comics and maybe animation, with many more never touched. You ever see Nitro The Exploding Man? Angar The Screamer? Captain Ultra? ANYBODY on this list of obscure characters? With a good enough movie, Frog Man is getting action figures.

Tell me modern Hollywood hasn’t done research by showing me “Left-Winger” and “Right-Winger” against John Walker’s Captain American/US Agent. You know they’d #@$%$ up those characters royally in 2024.

By doing these things, Marvel has weakened the brands they hoped to use to push those characters. Even the marketing calles Miles Morales by his name, not at all (or sometimes alongside the brand) “Spider-Man”, to tell him apart from Peter Parker. Even black people I follow refer to Sam as Falcon, Captain Falcon, Black Captain America, Captain African-American, or something along those lines. Black Panther got drawn into the gender war. Meanwhile, Marvel has a bunch of black heroes wondering when they’re going to get a shot even though they aren’t as highly recognized even among comic fans. Considering what they did to Echo and other Marvel characters, including now blackening Wonder Man in upcoming productions, The answer might be never.

Beats taking the bus.

Battlestar, John Walker’s “Bucky” during his time as Captain America (apparently “buck” is a racial slur, though the only buck I know are Buck Rogers, the male dear, and the standard action figure body), did make an appearance in the more recent Marvel’s Spider-Man cartoon for Disney XD, and on Disney Plus’ The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, but I only found that out during research. It certainly wasn’t promoted, like Sam’s taking the Brand. Again, it’s the Brand they think is important and not why it’s important. How very corporate. Riri Williams, the other character Brian Michael Bendis created for his adopted kids (I guess Miles is his son and Riri his daughter, but I rarely look into the families) got tied to Wakanda, because all black people come from Africa I guess–news to Haiti, and they’ve been trying to get her own show out. Given that Sam’s first movie as Captain America has had more reshoots than any other production I’ve heard of thus far, she might be waiting a while. Meanwhile, Blade keeps getting pushed back into infinity. Whomever gets cast will have to be immortal waiting for this to happen.

Poor Black Goliath never got to be cool anywhere. While Black Panther has made prior animated appearances, Bill Foster doesn’t even get more than a cameo in a couple of movies set after his retirement, being a peer of the also retired Hank Pym. (At least this one hasn’t been accused of spousal abuse…yet.) Rhodey, the first Iron Man I was exposed to, got to be War Machine for a half-hour total before being beaten half to death–oh, never mind, he was a Skrull the entire time! It’s still better than being turned into a messed up cyborg and killed off more than once, like the comics have done to him and that still ticks me off, but only because Rhodey didn’t get tortured nearly as much. Come to think of it, they killed Bill Foster in the comics as well, in a very dumb way during a very dumb story. I still maintain if you had to replace Terrence Howard for asking too much despite being a good casting choice, going with someone half his body weight and only barely matching the personality, no offense to Don Cheadle, was a bad idea. I would have accepted Rhodey as Iron Man for a fourth movie since he was Iron Man at one point, or make a War Machine movie.

Meanwhile, characters like Prowler, Night Thrasher, Cloak and recently created Blue Marvel have never shown up anywhere outside of a comic. Prowler showed up in the 90s Spider-Man cartoon and hasn’t been heard from again outside of a namesake in Into The Spider-Verse. That’s more than Cloak or Night Thrasher had. Cloak might get disqualified today for hanging out with Dagger, a blond woman who throws light daggers, but Night Thrasher…I couldn’t even tell you if he’s still alive in the comics. Blue Marvel is new, but predates Ironheart by eight years and…wow, both characters debuted the year I was in a hospital. What are the odds? And these are all the characters I know of besides Patriot because I’m more of a DC guy. There might be a bunch more that Marvel has failed to utilize from their history. Robbie Robertson has been in a few takes on Spider-Man but barely mattered in any of them outside the 1990s cartoon. They’re not popular? (a) Says who? (b) Neither were most of the other MCU heroes that Marvel still hadn’t sold off the movie rights to during their bankruptcy battle in the 1990s.

I take back what I’ve said in the past. I don’t want the current Marvel Studios or Sony anywhere near Prowler. They’ve ruined enough characters.

That didn’t stop them, and now every movie fan knows who Tony Stark and She-Hulk are, even if in She-Hulk’s case they might not want to thanks to a bad show. If not for the MCU making movies out of “what we have left” Doctor Strange would only be known for a failed TV pilot with the wrong costume (except for five minutes when the villainess tried to give him a new look to tempt him to her side), while Daredevil and Thor would be known for failed pilots that even the normie-known version of the Hulk couldn’t boost. You have to be in the know to understand why I want David Hasselhoff revealed as Samuel L. Jackson’s dad in the MCU. Those characters still got movies and streaming show appearances, with Daredevil having a very popular show on Netflix. The Netflix shows, which are not part of the MCU, is also the only time anyone saw Luke Cage that wasn’t de-aged for Ultimate Spider-Man, a version that isn’t exactly high on fans’ lists of takes on Spider-Man. Falcon has been in any cartoon that involved the Avengers since his debut, even the bad ones like United We Stand. The MCU is the first time he took Steve’s mantle for the branding rather than boost his own brand. It’s easier to them to use the Name, forgetting why the Name is popular in the first place. That takes effort and surface viewing is what they do in Hollywood.

So what goes on here? How can Marvel claim they want to uplift black voices, but only doing do by taking another character’s name rather than build their own, even if they already had their own? It’s more surface level representation, make it look like they’re doing good with the most minimal effort possible. All it tells me is they don’t actually care about this cause, or the characters they’re adapting, or the fans of the characters they’re adapting that would push THEIR brand if they did all those things right. So as I keep asking, if they don’t care, why should I?