Characters who have been made black?

[stelok]

Let's see,

there are previously white characters in comics who have been remade as black characters.

Star Boy (Mark Waid's Legion of Superheroes)
Kingpin (Daredevil movie)
Pete Ross (Smallville TV series)
Nick Fury (Ultimates)

What the heck is going on? Is there a reason why they decided to change the color of the characters' skin?

[Generic Eric]

What the heck is going on? Is there a reason why they decided to change the color of the characters?

Reparations?



















:D

[Reptisaurus!]

Let's see,

there are previously white characters in comics who have been remade as black characters.

Star Boy (Mark Waid's Legion of Superheroes)
Kingpin (Daredevil movie)
Pete Ross (Smallville TV series)
Nick Fury (Ultimates)

What the heck is going on? Is there a reason why they decided to change the color of the characters?

I assume that two of those were a best-actor-for-the-job bit. I thought the dude who played Kingpin NAILED it.

(Not so sure bout the gal who played Alicia, though.)

And the last, well, way I hear it they WERE gonna make Captain America black, but they pussied out. Hence Nick Fury.

Edit: Never read Legion. I saw Smallville a couple of times, but I don't remember a black Pete Ross. (Or anything really, sides a kind of lazy feeling of antipathy.)

[founder81]

There's always Lex "Michael Jackson" Luthor.

In the Superman cartoon Lex was black, then in Justicie legue he wasn't.

I looked for some pics, but only found the same one over and over.

[Omar Karindu]

In the Superman cartoon Lex was black, then in Justicie legue he wasn't.

Uh...no. I've seen this said all over the place, but it doesn't appear to be true. The confusion stems from the fact that the Animated Series Lex was visually modeled on Telly Savalas and his portrayal of James Bond archfoe Blofeld in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Bruce Timm mentions this specific influence in various interviews and commentaries.

Savalas was Greek, not black, and Lex's skin tone in the Superman animated series was meant to reflect this. Indeed, a comparison with the indisputably black characters on the show reveals that Lex's own skin tone is more a Mediterranean tan. For that matter, his voice actor was Clancy Brown, who is not African-American, though that doesn't mean much in cartoons.

[scratchie]

Don't forget Mister Terrific.

Is there a reason why they decided to change the color of the characters?

Is there a reason why they shouldn't?

[Ryan Day]

There's really no reason not to change the colour of a character if you're starting over in a new universe/continuity. With a very few exceptions - you really couldn't make the Red Skull a black man - race has nothing to do with the character. White is just the default, since most of these characters were created 40-50 years ago.

More interestingly: Who couldn't you change? (Granted, you could if you fiddled with and/or ignored some of the back story)
- Luke Cage
- Storm
- Any of Captain America's Nazi-type villains
- Magneto
- Shaman
- Black Panther

[suedenim]

A more unusual question would be "what characters have actually become black in the context of a story?"

Which may be one of the only questions for which "Lois Lane and the Punisher" is a (partial?) answer....

[stelok]

Don't forget Mister Terrific.

?

Well, The modern age Mr. Terrific is a different new person and was never the Golden Age Mr. Terrific but rather his replacement.

The ones I mentioned were originally white characters, not replacements.

[scratchie]

Well, The modern age Mr. Terrific is a different new person and was never the Golden Age Mr. Terrific but rather his replacement.

True, but Ultimate Nick Fury is a completely different character than Nick Fury, too.

[Loren]

True, but Ultimate Nick Fury is a completely different character than Nick Fury, too.

So are all of stelok's other examples. They aren't characters who suddenly turned black between appearances in a comic; they're characters who were made black when the character was adapted for another incarnation. If you count Mr. Terrific, then you might as well count Green Lantern, since Hal Jordan and John Stewart have both used that name.

And as to the original question, Harvey Dent was black in both of Tim Burton's Batman movies.

[Gingold]

Lois Lane and the Punisher each had stories where they became black.

Edit: And I was too lazy to notice that suedenim had already pointed that out.

[Reptisaurus!]

The basic problem here is that Big Two superhero books are still basically recycling the sixties (Give or take a decade) ad infinitum. But a completely white cast ain't gonna hold much of a mirror too society, so to speak.

So when re-modeling older properties, making a formerly white dude black seems to be an easy way of "updating" your properties while not actually introducing any new elements that weren't part of their sixties incarnation.

Yeah, whole thing seems kinda skeevy to me. And not good writing.

(Although I'd be all for a black Captain America.)

[maczero]

Reparations?

Great. Instead of my 40 acres and a mule, I get token characters in my comics.

Seriously, though I have no problem with this. The only time it becomes an issue is if an iconic character undergoes a race change for purely PC reasons.

As for making Magneto black, I wouldn't have a problem with that. Although, I can see why a racially motivated character as a black man might be slightly controversial.

[dancj]

As others have said, these are characters created back when white was the default (moreso than it is now) and there is no reason that these characters needed to be white. It therefore seems reasonable to me to make some of them ethnic minorities to make the supehero cast a bit more multiracial.

Adam Hughs said he went for a mediteranian look for his Wonder Woman covers. Personally I think DC should consider making that canon.

In the case of Nick Fury though there is a specific reason that Millar explained somewhere (I can't find a link). He said that the original Nick Fury was modelled on the coolest actor around - maybe Richard Burton (I can't remember for sure) so when he revamped him he did the same thing and therefore based him on Samuel L Jackson.

Dan