The best way to introduce diversity in Marvel Comics

The argument

This argument accepts the goal and disputes the method. There is nothing inherently wrong, on this view, with a push for diversity in comic books; a cast that reflects the real world is a political agenda, but an accurate one, and proponents do not ask Marvel Comics to abandon it. The objection is to how it has been pursued. When a legacy character is retired and the identity handed on — Peter Parker's Spider-Man succeeded by Miles Morales — the new hero arrives already occupying someone else's name, costume and powers. That is what this argument means by shoehorning: the diverse character is fitted into a slot built for another figure rather than given one of his own, so the change reads as an agenda applied to the history of comics rather than as a story grown out of it. The alternative proposed is additive rather than substitutive. Diverse heroes should be given their own superhero identities and their own powers, so that they stand as originals instead of as replacements. Keeping the established heroes in place while introducing new ones builds on the history of the medium rather than overwriting it, and that matters in a form whose value is largely accumulated: decades of continuity are the asset, and an iconic hero is worth something precisely because readers have followed him for so long. Proponents present this as a trade with almost no cost. Well-established characters remain in the comic universe, so nothing readers already care about is sacrificed. What is gained is a wider range of characters readers can find relatable and a fictional world that more realistically resembles the actual one. Because the additive route delivers the same representation without spending the medium's own past to get it, this argument concludes that it is the best way to introduce diversity, and that the politics of comics need not interfere with the history of comics.

Premises

Counter-arguments

While there have been a couple instances of "shoehorning" diverse characters into comics, there are more instances of a logical character inheritance of an identity. For example, Marvel created an entire universe devoted to diverse versions of beloved characters. Later, they wrote a storyline which saw some characters, like Miles Morales' Spider-Man, move permanently to the central marvel universe. This shows an attempt to establish characters before bringing them to the central comic book universe, rather than a random insertion to further a political agenda.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Replacing the original heroes with diverse ones is the correct way to bring diversity into comics.