I was happy to see this sentiment from comics writer Len Wein which matches mine pretty closely. I badly want to see more diversity in Superhero comics, but if you make that the entire *point* of a character, that’s a recipe for a 2-dimensional, uninteresting character.
Infographic courtesy of Charlie Kirchoff.
I remember being a kid and seeing the X-Men cartoon on T.V. I couldn’t believe me eyes. There, on TV, was an animated black woman. A super heroine. Who was smart. Powerful. Just… it was so cool! The only black characters in cartoons I can think of was like, Fat Albert, and Bebe’s Kids, and Susie from Rugrats, and the lady in Tom and Jerry whose legs you saw, and… I could be missing some because these are things I watched but I can’t think of very many (I guess Patty Mayonnaise from Doug too)
And here was Storm, with powers, and just as capable as all the boys, and seen as a queen by some, and later became the leader of the Morlocks, and just… it was a huge deal to me. And reading this quote it’s like, this is so true. It wasn’t like, “that black chick from X-Men,” it was, “Storm.” I want my characters to be like that in my stories, not “that one gay guy” or “the black woman” but just know by their names :) The joint book series my partner and I have is full of a bunch of diverse characters, and I hope we accomplish this same thing.