Also you got Catwom... No that wasn't really Catwoman.

My guess is that most producers still think that the world isn't ready for this sort of thing. AND they'll look at things like Spawn and Steel and Catwoman as examples.

I mean we'll ignore all the shite superhero movies with white lead actors. The movies themselves were shite not the actor. But it never applies to black lead actors.

Point blank, there just aren't a lot of major black superheroes to go through.

Sure, we have Black Panther, John Stewart, Luke Cage, STORM!, but who else?

Unfortunately, very few black superheroes reach icon status. If we are going to get more black superheroes, we have to push for them.

I know technically he's only black by skin color, but I wouldn't mind seeing a movie about Seido with Darrius as the main character. It's a good story, just not within the MK games.

Lets bring in Power Man (Luke Cage), or David Zavimbe aka Batwing

Framing the question in the context of films makes it much easier to answer, because the simple fact is, there aren't the characters to sustain a significantly larger percentage.

You've got to lead with your strongest choices and the majority of "black" characters are secondary options, or lower. Obviously you can search for deeper implications in the source material -- which hasn't provided for these adaptations -- but at a cold glance, it's just a lack of visible properties and strong material. This probably only gets more important as more of these movies get made, and the market is flooded.

Imagine how much worse Green Lantern could've been if it was a shitty movie AND that other guy instead of the "real" Green Lantern.

Irrespective of sequels, the best bang for buck has probably been Blade.

Blade was a lot of the right circumstances coming together at the right time. A certain amount of obscurity protected Blade in that it avoided the negative stigma of comic book movies at the time, but was also ahead of the curve that was coming, and the hardcore scrutiny that brought. It would be a mistake to say the movie version of Blade was a complete departure from what had happened in the comics to that point, but it was also free enough to not have to worry about the characters long print history. The high concept was a winner and the execution right on the money.

You can attach Blade to a lot of cinematic trends and interests of the time, but at the end of the day, in 1998, Blade was just everyday good. To some extent, this divorces it from the reality of the modern era of the superhero blockbuster.

Personally. I think Black Panther's the obvious character to go with.
It's a property with a strong central core, some amount of name value, strong connections with the hugely successful Avengers umbrella (already reinforced in cartoons), and perhaps most importantly, it's unique.

The more these things get pumped out, the more they need to have a hook, and Black Panther is about as unique as they come. There's a wealth of material to pull from, but it's an exciting, unique high concept.
Like a lot of superhero movies, though, Black Panther to his fullest extent demands big budget, and that's where it probably starts to get delayed.

There's no reason Black Panther won't work when the time is right, but there are forces working against it on a blank page. Where Blade was generally good, tapping in to high concepts shared across a vast array of demographics; Black Panther runs the risk of playing an uncertain hand. You can find similar patterns of success in movies like Iron Man and Thor, but Black Panther, at his best, defies the things that make those movies work.

He's a hero of an insular, fictional African nation, full of bizzare sci-fi imagery and concept. His greatest weapons are cultural tradition and blistering intelligence. American audiences typically trend away from the foreign and the cerebral, so that may make for an uphill battle. Thor and Iron Man navigated away from these problems, but by having done so, they've arguably made it harder for the next guy, let alone the guy who has to handle EVERY problem.

If you go the other end of the scale, you hit a character like Power Man (Luke Cage). If you divorce him from the decade-plus struggle of Iron Fist, you get a soft target for a low budget movie. If you go that way, there's a risk you write Cage off from bigger and better things, so the conservative option may be to wait. There's also Marvel's efforts to move into TV, where low cost characters like Luke Cage become more realistic, as well. For all we know, he's a guy who'll strut around in SHIELD, or shoot for his own show (more Blade territory; a show Cage might've showed up in, had it lasted).

Low budget expectations protect Cage from a lot of the obstacles of a character like Black Panther, but obviously speaks to the more sensitive problem of the difficulty to sell African-American leads, in general. Concept and character can win out, but the data has never been flattering. It's one of the primary reasons you're talking ensemble and supporting characters, rather than franchise leads, when you're talking comics source material. Publishers might want to support and use characters, but sometimes the bottom line doesn't allow for solo spotlights.

Unfortunately, some of the guys who've made a point of trying to reverse the trend have suffered for it by making the point their primary focus. Personally, I think it's a drain on everything if you try to force the point. You've gotta do it legit if you're gonna get anywhere. Comic or movie, you're limiting your scope if you pitch specifically to a niche, or insular sub-culture, which is what some of those alternatives have done. It's arguably why people know Static Shock the cartoon, but not the Milestone comics. It's also why a more general concept like Spawn is one of the big successes.

In the meantime, there's activity. War Machine's back in a few months in Iron Man 3. Falcon's presumably on his way in Captain America: Winter Soldier. You never know what those characters might do in the future.

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/02/the-25-most-memorable-black-comic-book-characters/
Inspiration for the thread, or wacky timing? Worth a look.
Edit: Oh, Black History Month. Duh!

Mick's got it right on the money for why there's no black comic characters, and it doesn't help that Hollywood still thinks that the lead should be a white man/woman too.

Some people argue that it's because most black comic characters don't have strong arch nemesis...others argue that it's a pure marketing and exposure issue, and others argue that it's largely because of stereotypes.

I personally think it's gotta be a combo of all that stuff. Blade for instance, did well not because they marketed him well (especially not that first movie of the trilogy), but because they were able to adequately keep him away from stereotypes. At the same time, you say "vampire" and that kind of automatically vanquishes most stereotypes with him because he's a vamp himself, and a vamp hunter. It's not hard then, to find him enemies either.

- What'd be the matter with an origin-to-adult movie about Static/Black Lightning? People not like him? I know he had a cartoon series.

DISCLAIMER: I am half-black so I would appreciate any racist and/or prejudice assumptions be kept to yourself.


Blacks just didn't make good super heroes... Super heroes weren't created when blacks were at the top of the "cool dude" list... so the majority that were created and are to this day well-known enough to create box office hits are white. I cannot even list any black comic book characters that I know of. So you'd have to convince people that this movie (a movie with a black comic book character that nobody has ever heard of) would actually be worthwhile.

Since the majority of people still think "oh look at that thug" when they see a black person... it's going to be a while before any of this changes.

It amazes me how any people have no fear in expressing their racism and/or prejudice behind the safety of their computer screens and video game monitors, but go around the real world pretending not to be.

Maybe I don't know enough comics... and don't read enough. That's just how I see it.

It's funny though, that in some "reboots" (not specifically comic books) characters that used to be white are being replaced by blacks. What really comes to my mind as an example are the latest James Bond films (Moneypenny and Felix)

Comic properties have probably had some of the most famous examples of that, too. Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent, Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (comics & movies), Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters. We're about to have Laurence Fishburne as Perry White in The Man of Steel; there was some controversy over Idris Elba as Heimdall, in Thor.

It's not the worst thing in the world, but I think if you really want to solve the problem, you've got to do it properly. As a fan, I find disparate agendas an unwanted distraction from the material. It changes the context of one thing and solves little for the other. The solution has to be building quality around what's there, letting genuine ideas lead to the creation of new characters.

The movies should be accessible distillations of what already exists. It isn't the role of an adaptation to attempt to effect significant change. Hollywood's learning the lesson slowly as it invests more and more in comics and other pop properties, but they've got a knack for slipping into the old logics. It's common enough that some people in the audience will now even fight for it -- which is to address the broad notion of change, not just race.

Ultimately, clumsy race relations has a way of being a bit of an American preoccupation. Comic book superheroes are an American medium and there's room there to address the argument up-front -- something that's been famously done in comics like Green Lantern, not just with the famous GL/GA 'skins' scene, but also the introduction of John Stewart. Does the 70s 'angry black man' stereotype do any more favours than anything else? I don't know, but it'd be a pretty ballsy thing to address. Of course, it would also almost certainly be less viable a franchise than a more straight forward GL.

Comics began with a bunch of (Jewish) white guys and people tend to regurgitate what they know, so it's not all together surprising, regardless of any hypothetical prejudices, for comics to be white dominated.

Something that isn't often taken into account is the nature of the medium. Even beyond time and space, there's the fact that we work with white paper. The most simple, semi-realistic image you can render onto white paper with black print ink is the outline of a man. The all pervasive white male, 20-35 is as much a generic figure as anything. Which is arguably why he's also positioned at the centre of the most successful, broadly appealing franchises.

From there you can also get into the absence of a lot of specific character traits. Regardless of who's playing the character, or where they're from, all the voices hit a similar mid-atlantic non-specific American tone. On and on it goes. When you break it down into smaller niches and minorities, or even just other nationalities, you start to appreciate the absence of a lot of other representations. They don't have the baggage in American social culture, but disregard/ignorance for what's beyond borders is something America tends to more comfortably unite around.


Short answer: not nearly as interesting or storied as other characters.

Doesn't mean it couldn't work, but in a crowded space, it's not the kind of thing that demands attention, so it doesn't get it.

Black Panther will eventually happen.

phase 3 most likely.

Black Panther is a horribly dull character in my opinion. I've never liked that character. And frankly he felt very token-ish... "the black avenger".
Any black character with the word "black" I found it always bothered me (I'm looking at you, Black Vulcan). We dont call the human torch White Fire! Hahaha

Blade and Spawn were awesome, and I am actually really glad they were part of the first generation of superheroes to make it into the movies.

Other good black characters in superhero movies were Storm, War Machine, Darwin, Angel, Lucius Fox, Nick Fury, and I am sure there are more I cant think of.

Others were god-awful, like John Wraith, King Pin, Catwoman,Steel (hahahaha)

I think Cyborg and Luke Cage have lots of potential. Especially Cyborg.
John Stewart is also a cool character. Ohh! and Vixen!!! she is very cool. Same with Firestorm! he could be a good one.


Also... I'm still hoping for a Cloak and Dagger movie. They are 70's as all fucks, but I still like them!

I think this is why War Machine should have been included in Avengers.. Because they were Earths Whitey-est heros! To be fair I've always thought Storm was a good example of a strong female hero and also a black hero. I also think John Henry Irons was the best thing to come out of The Death of Superman BUT his reputation for movies has been damaged by the Shaq incident. I'm also a Cyborg fan! Liked him in Teen Titans, JLA: Doom Animated movie, and Hes one of my regulars in Lego Batman 2! (Which is awesome) Spawn is another front runner, I know hes not a traditional Superhero but a very interesting mythology built up.