Recently Black superheros have been taking the stage front and center from Marvel's Netflix series Luke Cage, to the Black Panther making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Captain America: Civil War, characters created by Brian Michael Bendis like Ultimate Spider-man: Miguel Morales and Iron Heart (Riri Williams- Tony Stark's Iron Man protege), and most recently CW's Kid Flash from the Flash TV series Wally West.
The first three Black superheroes were most notably Luke Cage, Black Panther and Storm who made her debut in Giant Sized X-Men #1 in Marvel Comics and then also DC introduced their superheroes such as Black Lightening, Green Lantern Jon Stewart, Cyborg, Icon and others. Recently, Marvel has been more adventurous in shaking up the status quo of their traditional characters like a time making Sam Wilson "The Falcon" as the primary Captain America, a female Thor (longtime on and off Thor love interest Jane Foster), an Asian-Korean Hulk (one of the Incredible Hulk's buddies Amadeus Cho who is also one of Marvel's smart teen geniuses), an mixed Black and Latino Spiderman, and recently a brilliant 15 year old Black female Riri Williams as a female Iron Man known as Iron-Heart. Even Iron Man's love interest and assistant Pepper Potts has also donned some Iron Man armor. Also, even to DC Comic's credit they did also make Jimmy Olson on the CBS now CW's Supergirl to a Black man James Olson who is still Superman's best bud and also has stepped his role in the latest season of Supergirl. No spoilers so I do encourage you to check out and see about all these characters.
Coincedentally, I wasn't the only person to come up with this top as YouTube channels Comics Explained and Comicstorian have also did videos on this subject and stating their stances on this subject. Why some people may feel upset that some traditional heroes are being changed but my opinion is this is 2017 and diversity is welcomed. Other ethnicities need their heroes and heroines. For instance, not only does Marvel still have Peter Parker webslinging as Spiderman but New York is big enough to have two men- one Black and one White both equally wear the mantle of Spiderman and both have membership on the Avengers. Heroes such as Steel, Duke Thomas and Batwing don't replace superheros such as Superman, any of the previous and current Robins and Batman but they have more than enough room in the comics to work alongside them. So, my opinion is it is not so much about replacing and changing the status quo but letting us have our own heroes. There was a point in time where we didn't have this much diversity. Yes, we had few heroes such as Luke Cage, Black Panther, Storm, Black Lightning, Icon, Blade and Falcon.
Marvel's television division included diversity with Mack, Melinda May and Agent Triplett in their Marvel's Agents of Shield and female Inhuman SHIELD agent and fan favorite Sky aka Daisy Johnson. Also, CW's the Flash and Arrow introduced characters such as Wally West and Iris West who instead of being white are Black on the TV show, Mr. Terrific on Team Arrow, Firestorm, Hawkgirl and Vixen. Marvel's partnership with Netflix brought us Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. The Luke Cage series dealt with the current issues of racism and police brutality. As even rapper Method Man cameos in the series and trades hoodies with the one Luke was wearing shot up with holes as a reference to the killing of Trayvon Martin. So, overall in my opinion diversity in comic books is a welcome change in my opinion.
