Blog Post #4

The two superheroes comic books that I chose to read was one “Black Panther: An Nation Under Our Feet Vol. 1”, that was published in 2016 by Ta-Nehisi Coates through Marvel Comics. And two “Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Vol.1” written by Brian Michael Bendis, also from Marvel Comics. Both of the main characters in these comic books are individuals with African ethnicity which shows the diversity in which the company is trying to expand on. Black Panther, on one hand, is king of this hidden fictional city known as Wakanda where civilization is highly advanced and segregated from the current world. On the other hand, Miles Morales is a teenager with this incredible spider like abilities. These two books reflected so much diversity and pop culture within their storytelling which I found to be really relatable. For instance, in Spider-Man: Miles Morales the main character is seen swinging around the city while interacting on his phone going through his social media. One of the biggest social issues that seem to arise in this spider-man novel would be the issue in regards to the identity of Spider-man. Ultimately, once the general public knew that Spider-man was a kid of African descent, some people reacted to it in a negative tone. I believe the novel did a great job of shining light on this situation of racial bias. The skin color of any person should be given little to no importance which Miles stressed in the story. Additionally. one of the articles I chose from d2l’s “Western Comics and Diversity” section was “Why Black Panther is Such a Big Deal for Women” and honestly I can relate to some of the statements that were being made. I think for everyone, representation is such a great feeling especially on such a big scale such as Disney movies where it reaches a massive audience around the world. Me being Hispanic, I never really saw any Hispanic looking characters to which I could relate too. Therefore, I chose the superhero in which was closer to my skin color or physical appearance. The second article I chose was “Keeping score in the DC vs. Marvel diversity arms race”. My opinion on this article is that although I do support diversity within the blockbuster films, I don’t think individuals should force these diverse castings choices to happen in order to reach a broader audience. Personally, I believe movies in which cast a random actor from different ethnic background other than white, only do it in order to please the audience to go watch, with really no good intentions behind it other than making more money. Instead of trying to please the audience by casting an actor that looks nothing like its counterpart they should focus on making solo movies for those characters in the dc/marvel universe that are already established. For instance, I would rather have a solo movie of Blue beetle a character with a Hispanic ethnicity rather than casting a latino for Captain America. Also, my thoughts about The 99: Origins and what it is trying to say about diversity and heroism, is that it’s really cool how they made this fictional character a worldwide symbol for feminism. Which on its own made it diverse for every person to be “Wonder Women” around the world. Its empowering to think people suffering from difficult times have the motivation to keep on going based on what Wonder Woman represents. The same can be said for the comic book that my group created on Thursday about a girl who is super relatable. We talked about how funny it would be if our main character with all these great superpowers still made mistakes such as waking up late to class, not doing her homework, forgetting to study for a test and etc. We thought it would be great to show that even a superhero such as this girl with all these superpowers, still had to face struggles that the majority of other people do.

Work Cited

Bendis, Brian Michael, and Oscar Bazaldua. Spider-Man: Miles Morales. New York, NY: Marvel Worldwide,, a Subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 2018.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Brian Stelfreeze, Chris Sprouse, Laura Martin, and Joe Sabino. Black Panther: A Nation under Our Feet. New York, NY: Marvel Worldwide,, a Subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 2017.

Rems, Emily. “Why “Black Panther” Is Such a Big Deal for Women.” Salon. April 04, 2018.