The comic book writer Mark Millar tells a nice story about his part in transforming spymaster and all-around badass Nick Fury from a white cigar-chomping second world war veteran to the African-American version portrayed by Samuel L Jackson in the movies. While working on the 2002 miniseries The Ultimates, Millar and artist Bryan Hitch co-opted Jackson’s appearance without asking for permission, only to discover later that the Pulp Fiction star took the swiping of his image rights as a giant compliment.
“Sam is famously the coolest man alive, and artist Bryan Hitch and I liberally used him without asking any kind of permission,” Millar said in an interview last year. “This was 2001 when we were putting it together. The idea that it might become a movie seemed preposterous, as Marvel was just climbing out of bankruptcy at the time.”
Millar apologised to Jackson after meeting the actor in 2014 on the set of Kingsman: The Secret Service, which is based on one of the Scottish writer’s comics. Jackson’s response? “Fuck, no, man. Thanks for the nine-picture deal!”
Fury will probably go down as one of the most successful transformations in comic book history, and it sparked a trend. Since Millar’s revisionist take first debuted, Spider-Man, the Hulk and Thor have been given new personas based on a diversity-first blueprint. The main wall-crawler in print is now the mixed-race Miles Morales, though Peter Parker still features in some comics, while Hulk is a Korean-American teenage genius named Amadeus Cho who, in contrast to his predecessor Bruce Banner, enjoys being the giant green meanie. Meanwhile, the current Thor is actually Jane Foster, the Son of Odin’s sometime squeeze.
It doesn’t end there. This week, it’s being reported that the new Iron Man in the comics will be a 15-year-old girl, Riri Williams, a science genius who builds her own version of Tony Stark’s suit in her dormitory room at MIT. Williams is due to take over from Stark full time at the end of the current Civil War II storyline.
On the big screen, Marvel Studios won points for casting Idris Elba as Norse deity Heimdall in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, and introduced its most famous black superhero, Black Panther, in Captain America: Civil War. Memorably portrayed by the excellent Chadwick Boseman, the newly crowned king of Wakanda will be getting his own movie in 2018.
But the main Avengers have largely retained their white origins. Tom Holland will play the Peter Parker version of the web-slinger in next year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming; Robert Downey Jr is clinging on as Tony Stark, Thor is still a bloke and the splendid Mark Ruffalo is firmly ensconced as the Hulk/Bruce Banner.
Meanwhile, Marvel has also faced criticism for whitewashing Doctor Strange’s Asian mentor, the Ancient One, in Scott Derrickson’s forthcoming film. In a move that one of the writers admitted was intended to avoid upsetting Chinese filmgoers, the character will be played (somewhat bizarrely) by Tilda Swinton. The original Ancient One, lest we forget, was from the fictional Himalayan kingdom of Kamar-Taj, which is often seen as a proxy for Tibet.
So does Marvel’s film-making offshoot have a duty to follow its comic book arm and begin to reflect greater diversity? The short answer is: not if this involves putting square pegs in round holes. But if the studio can use diverse Marvel comics superheroes to add colour and a satisfying sense of story development to its cinematic universe, that becomes an entirely different matter.
Holland, for instance, has just started his run as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, so the Miles Morales version might have to bide his time before getting a Marvel Cinematic Universe debut. Likewise, there’s a strong sense that we haven’t yet seen the best of Ruffalo’s Hulk, especially as the not-so-jolly green giant is due to team up with Chris Hemsworth’s god of thunder for a superhero buddy movie in next year’s Thor: Ragnarok. On the other hand, Downey Jr would be just as big a pull as a suitless Tony Stark, offering sarcastic advice to a new generation of heroes.
The dual nature of most superheroes and their alter egos gives Marvel more room for manoeuvre than the makers of James Bond or the Jason Bourne series might have. When Amadeus Cho became the new Hulk in the comics, Banner was not killed off or sidelined: rather, writer Greg Pak chose to explore how the character might develop once freed from the green monster that’s been plaguing him for the best part of 50 years.
Downey Jr will be 54 by the time Infinity War rolls around in 2019; Ruffalo will be 51. Marvel Comics’ diversity push might provide templates for its studio counterpart to borrow from when its current crop of actors are ready for new challenges. And if that leads to a diverse big-screen lineup – instead of casting that, let’s face it, is based on a pretty narrow-minded, 1960s-influenced reading of US demographics – so be it.
