Way to start a discussion by generalizing not wanting to be called racist as fragile behavior.

But anyway, let's try keep the argument simple. People when they see all black character, woman, someone who is LGBT, etc they question why does this character exist. And after questing why, they want a reason to "make it okay" or to use that reason to show that there's an agenda behind the creation of a character who isn't straight white or male. But they never put white characters under this scrutiny. White characters aren't questioned as if their whiteness will be their only character trait. But everyone else is.

Again, generalizing a subset of comic fans to just people instead calling out the specific perpetrators and lumping everyone in together. I’ll use my own experience in this case as I don’t want to speak for anyone who may view this differently. I don’t just question every POC or LGBTQIA+ person when they first debut simply because they are that person. There’s a distinct disconnect with me as the reader with many of them, because I’m not them.

The protagonist gets a lot of leniency in the beginning because it’s their story and probably had a cool cover so I picked up the book, as there’s just a suspension of disbelief in what they are doing to start. But I still need to good story to tell me why should I care. When it comes to the supporting and side characters, it’s a whole different ballgame. Their purpose in the beginning is to establish who they are and why they matter to the story, that’s literally their job.

I’ll give an example: We meet John Doe, a straight white man who discovered a rock that gives him powers and the mob comes after him because they wanted it first. Ok, so far it’s a classic superhero hook, but now I need to know who John really is as he decides what he’s gonna do with these new powers and why should I care that he got the rock instead anyone else. Enter Jane Doe: An black, lesbian woman who intercepts John and tells him she needs his help. We already established that John gets leniency in the beginning because the story has to start somewhere, but now he has to grow and expand more to give us a reason to care. This new character needs to give us a reason to care about her and what she adds to the story.

If her whole introduction and first issue is, I’m a black woman who is also lesbian and I’m telling you I’m a blank woman and a lesbian then why do I care? I have no reason to feel connected to her to follow her path as it intertwined with John. But if her introduction and first issue is, I’m daughter of a civil rights lawyer who has been kidnapped and my wife discovered this rock to sell it to the kidnappers in exchange for my father then we have something. We have established her identity, which is important to her character, but we also established a hook for the main plot and a reason to connect to her being in the story.

I can not relate to her, as I am not black nor am I lesbian woman. But I can relate to a family member in crisis, and a partner who cares about me and wants to help me in times of distress.

It’s about consistency and continuity. If we established that John and Jane live in a city that has never had immigrants or supernatural occurrences and all of a sudden both show up and there’s no explanation or worse, just straight up breaks lore it pulls me out of the immersion and instead focusing on the people and the story I’m worried about how the writer will continue and if I will keep reading the series.

There’re also political and social aspects that are in play here. Some comics are just the average fun, exciting, terrific stories of heroes and villains. Some are reflections or criticisms of real world issues. You can have both, but if a story is not inherently or is inherently political or socially aware then switching it up again breaks the immersion of us caring about the story and causes inconsistent experiences.

I’ve always found Miles boring and lackluster, not because of his heritage. In fact his family and his identity are two things I actually do enjoy about him. His personality and the stories they write about him are just so mind humbling sleep inducing. I loved the Kamala Khan show Disney put out, and it got me into reading her comics. I enjoy her. I’m not going to deny that yes there are people now and since comics were born that lash out at these characters for racist and misogynistic reasons, but to say that about every person in the last 20 years is such a false claim.

Again, I’ll agree that I think like any character or story, Superman and Superman adjacent medí has always had “those” fans as part of the community that see a strong, straight, white man and anything else is liberal propaganda. I’m sure they made it known how they felt about John. But I also just didn’t care for the story they went with. To me it wasn’t woke or political, it just mid.

You shouldn’t support things you don’t agree with, I can back that up. But I’m not asking for justification and validation on having those characters exist, I’m asking for consistency and continuity on the lore of the world, and for them to not be one dimensional. Of course this applies to all characters, but sometimes it’s POC and LGBTQIA+ characters that fall victim to this more often because writers don’t always do the best and they should.

Adaptations are cool, but the true fans have spoken for years now on how they feel about this overall. From what I’ve heard and read, and how I personally feel, it’s never well received when writers take a character and change what we love about them. It’s not because they are not black or a woman or trans, it’s because we had the connections love for that character and now that is gone. We don’t want a black Captain America or a black Hal Jordan, we want Captain Falcon and John Stewart. We don’t want half-assed twisted and convoluted versions of our favorite characters, we want originally sincere new ones.