Tag: Brian Michael Bendis

One of my favorite G.I. Joe characters as a kid was Roadblock. When I watched the Rocky movies I loved Apollo Creed. My brother introduced me to Marvel’s Iron Man, and I took a liking to James Rhodes. My favorite football player was Marcus Allen. Likewise, I loved G.I. Joe’s Flint, Rocky’s “Italian Stallion,” Iron Man’s Tony Stark, and the New York Yankees’ Don Mattingly. My “heroes” weren’t heroes because they were black or white — they were heroes because they were just “cool.” These days, the politically correct, race-obsessed clowns at Marvel can’t have that. Instead, they have taken a page out of the pre-civil rights era mentality and started creating, for all intents and purposes, a “separate but equal” superhero class.

Here is what Brian Michael Bendis told the New York Daily News on Sunday regarding Marvel’s decision to make Miles Morales the new Spider-Man:

“Our message has to be it’s not Spider-Man with an asterisk, it’s the real Spider-Man for kids of color, for adults of color and everybody else.”

Here is the message Marvel is sending: If a superhero is a white man, then he isn’t for “everybody.” If the superhero is black, then he is for black children, for black adults, and, ummm, “everybody” else — once those first two groups are creatively coddled (usually by liberal white men).

If you think it’s weird to essentially make a separate-but-equal superhero class, then Marvel’s creative teams will probably label you a racist.

To see just how race-warped the minds of these creators are, one needs to only examine Bendis’ next statement:

The enormity of Miles Morales’ place in comic book history didn’t really hit Bendis, a father who has two kids of color among his four children, until recently. His 4-year-old adopted African-American daughter found a Miles Morales Spidey mask in the toy aisle of a department store, put it on and said, “Look daddy, I’m Spider-Man!” he recalls.

“I started crying in the middle of the aisle,” says Bendis. “I realized my kids are going to grow up in a world that has a multi-racial Spider-Man, and an African American Captain America and a female Thor.”

If “Douglas Jr.” put on a “War Machine” mask and said, “Look dad, I’m War Machine!” I would not correct my son and tell him that he was white/asian and couldn’t be James Rhodes. I would not start crying tears of joy because a half-white, half-asian Ernst child was pretending to be a black man. I would only start crying because he liked a character who was in the Air Force instead of an Army guy like Steve Rogers. (I’m joking about the Air Force making me cry. Sort of.)

Decades ago kids played “Cowboys and Indians.” They played “Cops and Robbers.” Fast forward in time and they pretend to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but yet guys like Brian Michael Bendis want us to believe that little children spend odd amounts of time arguing over a superhero’s race.

Many kids of color who when they were playing superheroes with their friends, their friends wouldn’t let them be Batman or Superman because they don’t look like those heroes but they could be Spider-Man because anyone could be under that mask.

What? What neighborhood did Mr. Bendis grow up in, where little white kids were telling black friends they could pretend to have been bitten by a radioactive spider, but they couldn’t pretend to look like Steve Rogers?

What neighborhood did Mr. Bendis grow up in, where a white kid’s imagination allowed him to be a green ninja turtle, but not James Rhodes?

Marvel’s “House of Ideas” is really the “House of Political Correctness” — and it’s not really a house. It’s more like an insane asylum where the race-obsessed inmates are in charge.

Miles Morales is a cool character. I have no doubt that he will have many heart-stopping adventures in the post-Secret Wars Marvel Universe. The problem is that these days it is somehow problematic if popular superheroes are straight white men.

If Marvel’s sales decline in its separate-but-equal universe, then there is no doubt that “racist” and “sexist” white men will be blamed for not embracing She-Thor and suddenly-gay Iceman. Marvel employees can take all the racial palliatives they want, but the truth is much more biting: the creative process does not reward writers whose every move is determined by a complex algorithm of racial calculus mixed with politically correct engineering.

With each passing day, Marvel becomes more and more a shell of its former self. That is why people try out books like “Peter Panzerfaust,” “Deadly Class,” “The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys,” and any number of other books that do not have “Marvel” on the cover.

Indeed, this generation of kids will have a more diverse set of Marvel heroes. It’s just a shame that those Marvel heroes are directed by political activists masquerading as comic book writers.