Ron Eniclerico '21, Editor-in-Chief

How Copyright Law Perpetuates the Lack of Diversity in Comics

How Copyright Law Perpetuates the Lack of Diversity in Comics

In 2015, Marvel Comics announced a revamp of its publishing line dubbed the “All-New, All-Different” Marvel.  The initiative replaced the white, male versions of its longstanding superheroes with members of groups underrepresented in the superhero genre.  The mantle of Captain America passed from Steve Rogers to the African-American Sam Wilson.  The Norse-god Thor was replaced with a female goddess.  Miles Morales—an alternate version of Spider-Man of Afro-Latino heritage introduced several years earlier—received new prominence, and the Korean-American teenager Wolfgang Amadeus Cho supplanted Bruce Banner as the Hulk.  The titular armor of Iron Man now protected a 15-year-old African American girl named Riri Williams.  Just two years later, in 2017, Marvel announced yet another rebranding, known as “Legacy,” that restored most of its characters to their traditional white male identities.  Around the time of that announcement, David Gabriel, one of the company’s vice presidents, explained that comic fans “didn’t want any more diversity…. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against.”

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