Race-swap and gender-swap tend to disturb me in general, and until I read your post I didn't realize why. But now I do; as you say, there is a lot more to characterization than appearance.
Sometimes it can be handled by having the character be someone new. It wouldn't work with Superman, for example, because Clark Kent has never been anyone else. The same for Batman/Bruce Wayne. But some heroes have been completely recast during various reboots. The Flash has not always been Barry Allen, and Robin was not always Dick Greyson.
But Green Lantern? I don't understand the problem there. Green Lantern is not historically one person. It's a team; there has already been a black Green Lantern for Earth (John Stewart) and at least one female Green Lantern that I can recall (though she was alien) and I think there were others; there were Green Lanterns who were orange, blue, cherry red, and grey, of just about any shape and size. I certainly wouldn't find it controversial for a woman of color to carry the role, so long as she wasn't supposed to be a gender swapped Hal Jordan.
Now most of the always black comic superheroes I recall were in teams, rather than on their own: Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes, etc., so that may speak to your cultural observations.
BTW, I'm recalling this from the sixties and seventies, since I lost interest in comics in the late seventies, and I was into DC, not Marvel, for the most part.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2015-03-03 01:46 pm (UTC)Sometimes it can be handled by having the character be someone new. It wouldn't work with Superman, for example, because Clark Kent has never been anyone else. The same for Batman/Bruce Wayne. But some heroes have been completely recast during various reboots. The Flash has not always been Barry Allen, and Robin was not always Dick Greyson.
But Green Lantern? I don't understand the problem there. Green Lantern is not historically one person. It's a team; there has already been a black Green Lantern for Earth (John Stewart) and at least one female Green Lantern that I can recall (though she was alien) and I think there were others; there were Green Lanterns who were orange, blue, cherry red, and grey, of just about any shape and size. I certainly wouldn't find it controversial for a woman of color to carry the role, so long as she wasn't supposed to be a gender swapped Hal Jordan.
Now most of the always black comic superheroes I recall were in teams, rather than on their own: Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes, etc., so that may speak to your cultural observations.
BTW, I'm recalling this from the sixties and seventies, since I lost interest in comics in the late seventies, and I was into DC, not Marvel, for the most part.