Good afternoon and happy Tuesday once again folks. Earlier in the week I found an article online dealing with the fan backlash against rumours that Michael B. Jordan might be cast as Johnny Storm in the new Fantastic Four movie.

The article was entitled ‘ The 5 most insulting defences of nerd racism” (you can find it pretty quickly by typing the title into google) and to make it easy for you here are the five arguments:
1. It’s not about race its about not changing the character’s race
2. You may just as well change everything then
3. This ruins the lore
4. Its unrealistic
5. Why don’t we just make all the black characters white then?

Now point 4 is unquestionably racist because it pretty much just says that black people don’t fit into the environment in comics but to a certain extent I wonder if the suggestion that changing the ethnic origin of a well known character is simply a matter of colour isn’t also racist because it suggests that their cultural and ethnic heritage is more or less irrelevant. Or does it, what do you think?

The article went on to speculate (very accurately, in my humble) that the reason that the majority of popular characters are white is that they were created in a time when nobody would actually have printed a comic with a non- white protagonist.

Its a sad fact that, in the Western market at least, thats still pretty much the status quo with a few notable exceptions. (If you get a chance to read Marvel’s ‘The Truth’ or ‘The Crew’ then I would highly recommend both as excellent reads).

So what do you think, is introducing ethnic diversity into the movie franchises a way to invigorate the comics industry, rabble rousing for marketing or is it just pointlessly spoiling the lore?

Let us know what you think! (Stu)