When reading the responses to this, my mind popped in a phrase from the first episode of Chapelle's Show that "Clayton Bixby" said. "Now see here, no one in my family was in anyway involved in any niggerdom."
The threat of a black super hero? Yikes! It doesn't bother me. And I have no concerns about quota. I see more black people reading comics nowadays then in the 80s when Ronnie Raymond was the struggling angst filled teen who had to put up with mean football players, an evil stepmother, and Crisis. Plus, he was in the JLA.
But there are always white heroes being popped out, or rather, old ones who stay around, and being updated for current situations (see Smallville or look at Wally West). Kyle Rayner was an attempt at this. People saw it, and the majority that was paying attention did not care for it.
So what if they make the new Firestorm black? It's really a case of finding a protagonist readers can identify with. It makes them more willing to pick up a comic. Some dismiss the comic on the same principle if the character is not one they can "connect" with. I don't read Wonder Woman. Never did. Only two comics I read where the protagonist was a black person were Green Lantern (John Stewart, back in the mid 80s) and that Shadowhawk piece of crap from Image. You know, the age of pretty covers. Two issues in, I stopped, just like all the other image comics I use for starting fires.
No good or bad that he is a minority, and the theory that it had to be a quota is, to me, rather silly. The way I look at it, the majority of comic writers are white males, and they tended to write comics for white males. So, the protagonists were... yup, white males. But the world is a little different than that.
Not everyone is white. I don't know how many people have slanted eyes, but I know one billion of them live in China. How many people have dark skin? One billion live in India. How many people are white? Before you start to think of U.S., remember that this is a cultural melting pot, where the largest minority is now hispanics, followed by African Americans. So, there are people of other colors and nationalities too.
Comics generaly did not give them any kind of representation because the writer and reader did not deem it to be important, and also the publisher did not deem it to be profitable. But times change. Firestorm could become one of those marketable icons, and DC is possibly looking to make a character that African Americans can identify with. So while girls buy Wonder Woman underoos, and some white nerdlings buy batman, superman, green lantern and flash t-shirts, maybe Firestorm too, will become a future icon and expand the culture gap.
Hell. Maybe I will buy a few issues. Nah. I will buy the first tpb. I hate doing the monthly thing.
