WARNING- This is a rant.
So I still cannot get over the latest issue of Spider-Woman that I finished reading recently.
I agree, Jessica Drew (the Spider-Woman alter ego) is cool. And she’s a mother. So double cool.
But, why?
Imagine that poor spider-fetus, bouncing from one end of the womb to another, rolling here and there while the mother is webslinging from one building to the next.
Why did we need her to get pregnant to justify her coolness? Wasn’t her already awesome legacy enough? She is a superhero in her own right, with no connections to Peter Parker and Spider-Man. She has a beautiful origin story. She’s had her own share of memorable moments throughout her career.
Then WHY GET HER PREGNANT?
Just one look at the current changes in the Marvel roster makes the inner comic-fanboy in me cringe with disgust:
• Iron Man is a black teenage girl (Riri Williams- look her up)
• There’s a Ms. America (America Chavez) who is a lesbian Latina. Don’t get me wrong- Ms. America used to be cool. But now, especially with all the gaygenda and the social potpourri the world is broiled in, she has become nothing more than a representation of two minorities.
• Captain America was revealed to be a brainwashed HYDRA agent during the course of a comic book series (HYDRA is the Marvel equivalent of a Nazi society, just to give context).
Why did the creators of these retconned characters feel the need to take political correctness so far? Diversity can be introduced in comics in much better ways- just look at Black Panther, Spider-Gwen and Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel). It’s not the fact that these characters are black, female and Muslim respectively, that define them. It’s their back stories. For these characters, their sacrifices and their accomplishments mean to us much more than where they stand on the socio-political radar.
But the trend now is different, isn’t it? Comic book creators are now hell-bent on pandering to the audience. All they want is to change along with the society, which is okay only if done right.
But talking about comic books is just scraping the surface. There are serious issues in literature and entertainment that make me hang my head in shame. Nobody asked for a gay Dumbledore, did they?
To end my tirade, here’s a brief account on how the people at Marvel introduce new characters today-
“So guys, we gotta make a new character- it’s gonna be edgy and funny. But remember the most important rule- IT SHOULD NOT BE A STRAIGHT WHITE MALE.
Here I have a bowl in which I've placed a few minority stereotypes we haven’t tried yet. For the sake of permutation and combination, I want one of you to volunteer for picking up three chits.
Mrs. Karen, you are the only female in our team who is an openly bisexual Mongolian with an African descent who has had three abortions and a double sex change a couple of years back, so who better than you to decide what the next Marvel character is going to be like!
Please, Mrs. Karen, do the honours!”
(Karen picks up three chits.)
“My dear friends, I am proud to announce that the new character in the Marvel family is called Zoey Turd. He is a brown paraplegic transgender who identifies himself as an asexual and an alt-right supporter, and has endured physical abuse from his straight white father as a child.
And he’s funny as hell.”
What are the superpowers of Turd you ask?
Does anybody care?
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