And to revisit the Iceman thing

Spartans300

Nailed it on the head here. The best people, the best writers, who know what to do with the characters and treat them like characters are the fans who grew up with them and have a passion for them. They don't treat them like props or as a way for the writer to insert themselves into the story.

Well, who else is going to become comic book writers other than comic book fans, right? This is sort a necessary quality of the comic book industry. Do your favourite characters constantly get killed off by someone who doesn't like them, only to be brought back by another writer who liked that character? Yeah. Do writers disagree with other writers' arcs and retcon stuff? Yeah. But this is also why comic book characters have such longevity, because Spider-Man and Iron Man and Batman have been rewritten and revised over the years to better suit the times. When Al Miller wrote The Dark Knight, there were some people who haaated it, because it fundamentally changed Batman... but ultimately, Al Miller probably saved Batman from cultural ignominy, because Adam West Batman wouldn't be selling out movie theatres. If Gail Simone wants to make Wonder Woman not some weird psychoanalytic bondage character, let's see it. If the story is good enough, I can forgive what the writer needed to do to make the story happen. (Including the stuff Mobofair writes. If he wants to "fix" things and retcon shit so he can write good stories, whatever.) The broader structural problems with comic books that reoccur time and again... I don't really know if there's anyways to fix that stuff without obliterating the American comic book medium as it currently is. (I.e. Japanese manga series that just end and are never seen again.) Happy to complain about its absurdities, but too old (and waay too late) now to try and be the vanguard of comic book continuity.

Ai Muhao

I don't just blame Jubilee and Psylocke being marginalised on nobody knowing what to do with them; I also blame fanboys becoming writers and editors, and then letting their prejudices get the better of them. The biggest example of that is Wolverine and his power creep, and conversely Cyclops becoming more and more monstrous. I especially despised things like the novelisation of one of the X-Men movies (Last Stand?) where it was hinted that Wolverine was Jean's ONE TRUE LOVE who would love her for her, or one of the comic writers who 'revealed' that Scott and Jean's marriage was essentially a sham because they never really got beyond their crush period from when they were teenagers. No, Jean's true love is Wolverine, who is also the true inheritor and true believer of Xavier's dream.

I think comic books have often been full of bad characters, regardless of their race or whatever social status. There might be somewhat more bad minority characters now because 1) some writers/editors are trying to force a creative issue, and 2) because many writers/editors are straight white males trying to write stereotypes they don't really understand. But it's pretty marginal: I think about Jubilee and Psylocke, both X-men characters that have been marginalized/forgotten for many years because nobody knew what to do with them, and that happened before any modern Twitter social justice movement. Really, what is happening with representation with mainstream comic book characters is all just a shell game. Corporate does it because they want to sell and advertise and distract from the fact that real, good representation of minority characters in creative works occurs when there is good representation of minority creators (and those who have experience relating with minorities). Then people squabble over it, as though it's the only thing holding comic books back, when... come on, Greg Land is still drawing.