MUSINGS - EVERYTHING OLD BECOMES NEW AGAIN...?

With this online art community, we have a unique opportunity to connect with our kindred. We must avail ourselves of this experience, for, once it's gone, it may never come again.

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Talking about the politically-correct recycling of our superhero icons...
- Okay, initially, I hated the idea of a Miles Morales Spider-Man. But, slowly, the reality of this, thanks in large part to the way the character has been depicted, has grown on me like a creeping cobweb...
BUT --- here are my comments from a friend's thought-provoking Facebook thread, and I invite you to share yours as well.

I understand the need to keep reinventing these characters, and sometimes this is done quite well. But overall, I resist the endless recycling, especially as it panders to trends and politically correct shifts.

I think I prefer those characters whose identities are less transferable. To some extent, The Batman is irrevocably Bruce Wayne due to the tragic personal circumstances which gave rise to the obsession for vengeance and justice. To bequeath that sort of crusade to anyone else diminishes the character a bit, in my opinion. Conversely, I feel that anyone who fits the rigid criteria can become Green Lantern. That character began as a legacy concept anyway. Similarly, I can imagine Princess Diana deciding to relinquish her Wonder Woman role to another Amazon of comparable ability and spirit.

Spider-Man started out as a freak accident, much like The Hulk, and there was no real repeating of the event which made these characters so outstanding. They were blissfully unique. But as time passed, and technology advanced, more ideas developed regarding new possibilities for replicating characters such as Spidey, Hulk, Captain America, Wolverine, etc.. Now, what was once an exciting superhero frontier is an overcrowded room full of various iterations of the same idea. The single benefit I do see is that this allows for more ethnic diversity, as well as gender-switching of iconic character identities.