#or to put it more precisely: lends all the colour to only one pov

[fideidefenswhore]

In November and December, he dismantled her household, dismissing her attendants one by one, beginning with [Lady] Pole. Catherine's supporters blamed Anne. It was simply to please her, they murmured, that Mary was to be demoted. It was even said that she would be shut up in a nunnery, or forced to marry a nonentity. And when Henry gave New Hall and its park to Anne's brother, George, and his wife, Jane, as their new country estate, it seemed that such fears might prove all too true.

Children of Henry VIII, John Guy

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Why (most of) the 2010s Marvel legacy characters didn’t work

For Marvel characters I think it comes off as profoundly undermining when they get legacies, at least in the specific way Marvel attempted this throughout the 2010s.

To explain this we need to actually first look at DC’s characters in order to compare and contrast why legacies for them tend to work out better than they do for Marvel.

Simply put back in the 1930s-1950s (if not even later) DC’s characters were almost always created as powers first, people second. Wish fulfilment fantasy figures over flawed mere mortals.

Consequently you could legacy Green Lantern and the Flash in the 1950s and then do so again in the 1980s-1990s because so so long as you had a guy with a ring and another guy with super speed you were retaining the essence of both characters, the fundamental point and appeal of them.

But the Marvel characters were the other way around and practically deliberately designed to be so. 

Thor was the story of the life and times of Thor Odinson. Spider-Man was the story of the life and times of Peter Parker. The Fantastic Four was never the story about a brainiac who stretched, a girl who could go invisible, a kid who could burst into flame and a guy who looked like a rock monster. 

It was about a stern scientist obsessed with his work. A nurturing young woman who loved him but was frustrated by his tendency to get lost in his work. Her younger brother interested in sports cars, girls, excitement and other typically hot headed teenage endeavours. And an average Joe who was tortured and depressed that he was no longer human. 

Ben Grimm could’ve looked like any kind of monster and the central point of his character would have been retained. The F4′s specific powers, complemented their personalities, but they were not the driving point unto themselves. 

In contrast let us consider Captain America, probably the Marvel character who’s done the ‘replacement legacy hero’ storyline the most (at least within 616 canon). How comes he  lends himself so much better to this type of story than the other Marvel characters? 

Simple, because unlike most of the big name Marvel characters you know of, he wasn’t created in the 1960s or beyond. Cap was the product of the 1940s and was a peer to those same early days super heroes from the Golden Age, including the original Green Lantern and Flash. Like them he began fundamentally more as a symbol and powerset than a person. 

But now flashing forward to the 21st century many (most in my view) Flash fans were upset (and continue to be so) Wally West’s ascension to the Flash mantle was undermined and ultimately undone for the sake of restoring Barry Allan to the spotlight. The reason for this upset when Wally himself had replaced Barry? Wally had proven himself a far more flawed, nuanced and complex character than Barry had ever been. 

He demonstrated a degree of characterisation in the Flash role that Barry never had. It wasn’t even that he simply had more of this than Barry, but that Barry, just like Jay Garrick preceding him, had little to speak of in the first place. Thus the contrast between Jay and Barry was mostly superficial but the contrast between Barry and Wally was as stark as comparing Spider-Man to 1950s Superman.*

But Wally West, and the entire DC Universe from Post-Crisis onwards in fact, were in that mould precisely because they were trying to be more like Marvel comics has been since the 1960s onwards. 

DC in effect began prioritising the people beneath the costumes over the powers.** But Marvel starting in the 1960s had pretty much always been like that with their heroes.

Consequently when legacies popped up and those new characters were pushed as being just as good, just as worthy, or (in some cases) lowkey pushed as being better  than their predecessors it naturally rubbed those fans with decades of emotional investment the wrong way. OBVIOUSLY  a woman or a POC can be just as worthy and just as capable as a man or a white person as a superhero. But series to series, character to character, it was almost like Marvel was taking away your beloved pet.

Imagine for a moment you had a pet named Rex that you’d known and loved for years. 

Then Marvel insisted on taking Rex away from you when there was nothing wrong with him. In his place they give you another clearly different pet with Rex’s collar, who gets Rex’s bowl, Rex’s food, Rex’s toys, Rex’s bed and even Rex’s name and asks you to treat them not as just a new dog but straight up the new Rex.

Except he isn’t Rex. Rex is Rex. The ‘new Rex’ playing with Rex’s toys, doing the same tricks as him or having his collar doesn’t change that.*** 

Because Rex was more than a collar, his toys or his tricks. He was an individual that you’d known and loved. And even if you know Rex is going to come back ‘eventually’ having Rex taken away from you at all, having the new Rex supplant them (especially if old Rex was screwed over for the sake of new Rex’s arrival) and having so many people insist new Rex is just as great or more great than old Rex (to the point where many people loudly proclaim they don’t even want the old Rex back and the old Rex was kinda lame and boring) is going to create a massive dissonance. Maybe you would’ve been chill with the new Rex is he was just another additional pet called Rover or even like RexY who was similar yet different to Rex, but not actually promoted AS Rex or as his replacement. 

Maybe you would’ve been okay with the new Rex if the old one got too old, died naturally or accidentally. But you aren’t okay with it because there was nothing wrong with Rex, you LOVED Rex and Rex had been with you and been around generally forever. So the new Rex felt like he was undermining him, especially undermining Rex’s individuality. 

That’s how I think most Marvel fans felt about practically EVERY legacy situation that’s ever cropped up from the 1960s onwards, not even the ones just from the 2010s. I remember  the outrage when Bucky was announced as the new Cap. I know there were people salty about Eric Masterson as Thor and the Spider-Man Clone Saga speaks for itself.

Compounding the situation is that more than a few media outlets (despite imo not representing the feeling’s of the majority at all) promoted (and in some cases still promote) the new characters as not just better than they are (see the dozen or so lists talking about how great Riri allegedly was) but along with many fans tear down the older characters whilst doing so. 

See every article ever talking about why Peter Parker in the movies (and sometimes in the comics) NEEDS to die for the sake of Miles becoming the new Spider-Man in spite of their rationales rarely making sense from a creative/financial POV and utilizing misrepresentations of both characters to varying degrees. Even fans that appreciate the social/political relevancy of the new characters are going to naturally be upset in response to that and angrily voice opposition when the character they love gets dragged through the mud like that. And that then gets exacerbated when they are labelled as bigots for feeling upset by the changes or reacting against the character they love being dragged through the mud.**** 

Especially considering they would’ve reacted the same way regardless of who was the replacement hero.  Again, fans at first didn’t take kindly to John Walker or Bucky as the new Captain Americas so the idea that backlash against Sam Wilson was entirely or primarily racist was itself profoundly ignorant. Especially when you consider black reviewers such as those on the Hooded Utalitarian were calling it out as bad storytelling and bad representation for black people. SpaceTwinks went issue by issue through Spencer’s Sam Wilson run and called it out as racist, ignorant and naive. NONE of which is me saying that there isn’t more than a little bigotry going around detractors of these new characters nor that there aren’t obviously bad actors.

But those people did not and do not represent the majority and framing the situation as though they do is disingenuous and highly unethical. In conclusion, the backlash against the 2010s Marvel legacy characters was entirely natural, understandable and for the vast majority came from a place of love for the original characters not a bigoted hatred for the new characters skin colour or sex. 

It was a testament to Marvel’s, and the wider media, misunderstanding the psychology of most comic book fans. 

P.S. In regards to that, though it isn’t exactly talking about what I’ve spoken about I’d highly recommend checking out this video which touches upon the disenchantment Star Wars fans felt over the Sequel Trilogy, which itself could be viewed as doing the same thing Marvel did with it’s replacement legacy characters.

P.P.S. The reason I think the likes of Miles Morales or Kamala Khan succeeded where others failed is chiefly due to their rise to the role of legacy replacements stemmed from their predecessors not  being sidelined for their rise to the spotlight. Miles never ever replaced the 616 version of Peter Parker, widely considered by most fans and Marvel internally as the true and legitimate version of the character. Kamala Khan meanwhile picked up the Ms. Marvel only when Carol Danvers discarded it and became Captain Marvel. She was still in the spotlight in her own right, Kamala simply got her own spotlight using Carol’s obsolete name. Which isn’t all that dissimilar to fan favourite Cassandra Cain’s rise to the Batgirl mantle now I think about it.

P.P.P.S. A possible counter argument to all I’ve said is the success of the Superior Spider-Man/Otto Octavius. After all why was he embraced when Sam Wilson and Jane Foster wasn’t? Was a double standard rooted in bigotry at play?

No, but the answer isn’t neat and simple.

I think Ock as the new Spider-Man was more embraced partially because Ock had been around essentially as long as Spidey himself. But more poignantly  pre-Superior Spider-Man was so atrocious that a sizzling and sexy idea like Superior (which generated tons of cheap novelty) felt utterly refreshing, even to people who had actually LIKED pre-Superior Spidey under Slott. It’s like how people praised the early Big Time stories despite their problems because compared to BND they were genuinely better.

Plus Superior, for all it’s god forsaken writing, didn’t exist to clearly workshop potential movie ideas or chiefly in aid of a social/political cause. Someone can agree that there should be more black or female superheroes but disagree that the older characters should be sidelined in the attempt to achieve that.

Especially when there were better alternative options such as introducing those newer characters within and alongside the established hero’s narrative or simply introduce them independently as has happened recently with the likes of Lunar Snow.

*This is also why I suspect Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman survived from the Golden Age into the Silver Age. Because they were the DC characters who (more than any of the other ones) had actual personalities/substance to them. **Of course this didn’t begin wholesale with the post-Crisis era. But noticeably the characters who had worked with this new shift in priorities prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths stayed generally the same thereafter (E.g. the Titans, Batman) whilst characters who had largely vacillated or struggled (e.g. Superman and Wonder Woman) were given fresh starts which proved critically and financially successful.  

***Not even if he does everything just as well as Rex did or does some stuff differently that’s still good (although the overwhelming majority of the time new Rex is clearly not as good as the old Rex).

****I’ve seen people be called racist and misogynists for calling out Riri Williams honestly ridiculous degree of competency as a hero/tech genius in spite of her age. This is not an invalid criticism, yet disliking the character because of those reasons is grounds to be labelled as something ugly by another (imo minor yet also vocal) contingent of fandom. 

Hell I was called a Trump supporting Breitbart reading bigot for calling out Marvel as two-faced due to never putting a black writer in charge of Sam Wilson as Captain America or a woman in charge of Jane Foster as Thor. It isn’t exclusive to comics either as I and other people have been accused of racism/misogyny for disliking the Last Jedi in spite of that film to my eyes being itself racist and sexist anyway.