Let’s talk about the Mantle Strategy… and Mila Kunis… and The Thing

Is Marvel preparing to make major alterations to future MCU characters in order to satisfy diversity spreadsheet quotas?

There’s a rumor out there that Mila Kunis is being considered for role in Marvel’s New Fantastic Four movie… as The Thing.  I’ve got to say, I like the moxie.  Let’s do it, let’s give the MCU the Viking funeral it deserves. And even if that rumor turns out not to be true… it’s just as likely that Marvel would still gender swap a very masculine character.

I kid, of course, they don’t deserve a Viking funeral.  Not anymore.

If you are not up to speed, let me nutshell the mantle strategy for you.  Captain America’s shield is an important symbol in Marvel’s world.  That symbol is more important than the man Steve Rogers.  Batman is a wraith and Superman is a god, but Bruce Wayne is a dissipated playboy and Clark Kent is a milquetoast journalist.  In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne says as much, “As a man, I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.”

Merchandise sales show it.  The Punisher, a former Marine (or policeman) and father, has seen his icon adopted by the soldiers, cops, and dads across America.  Cap’s shield logo outsells everything else in the catalogue.  You see fewer t-shirts with the full character on them.  I bet you have something in a drawer with the Batsymbol.

But we don’t live in Marvel 616 or DC Earth 0.  We live in the world that watches that world.  So, the criminals Gotham fear the night and what stalks the shadows, but we read the comic book and know the pain of a man fighting his own demons one thug at a time.  It doesn’t matter to the people of Marvel’s New York who Spider-Man is, but Peter Parker’s struggles to balance desire and responsibility matter to us, the readers.  We know their stories and motivations.  We live their triumphs.

That’s why people say Peter Parker is Spider-man and Miles Morales is Miles Morales.

That Barry Allen is The Flash and Jay Garrick is The Flash.

Hold on a second, that one didn’t work.

It goes without saying that Hal Jordan is The Green Lantern and Alan Scott is The Green Lantern.

Robin!

Dick Grayson is Robin and Jason Todd is The Red Hood.  But, The Red Hood was a villain from way back before Jason Todd just took over the name and Clark Kent was Nightwing in Kandor before Dick Grayson took over the name. Plus, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne are also Robin.

Case closed I guess the mantle strategy works.

Wait, Stephanie Brown is not Robin.

THAT must be it.  You can’t go genderswapping a character.  As long as you don’t do that the fans will love the new guy wearing the mantle.

Except the fans hated Jason Todd so much they voted to kill him, and he stayed dead longer than anybody in comics besides Bucky.  Deadman and Gentleman Ghost notwithstanding.

Falcon America didn’t work, Ironheart didn’t work, new Wolverine didn’t work.  So does the mantle strategy work for DC and not Marvel?

No, because Marvel’s first Human Torch was created in 1939.  He was an android that could manipulate fire and took on the name Jim Hammond.

Is there something else going on here?

Robin is actually a pretty good case for saying the mantle strategy does not work.  More than half of the characters to use the name have been in Elseworlds and a fair number of main continuity versions are unliked.  Two of five, unless you think the jury is still out on Damian in which case it might be three of five, and one of the five is the original and the other has moved on to us the first’s Elseworld Kingdom Come identity.  This is getting complicated.

To the extent that switching out Robins works it is because there is a reason for the audience to take the characters into their hearts and it is the interior story motivation for the character to be there.  DC has decided Batman needs Robin.  You and I can (and should) quibble about how much sense that makes in the character’s world, but the Batfamily moves product and a kid sidekick likely kept Batman alive through the beginning of the comic code era when gritty crimefighters were being removed from the shelves.  Dick Grayson grew as a character and to continue growing needed to move on from being The Boy Wonder.  Then Jason tried to steal the tires from the Batmobile and became the new streetwise sidekick.  He was a new Robin for a new age that the writers didn’t understand, so he had to go.  Now we get Tim.  Batman has lost two proteges and doesn’t want another but sees the potential in Tim to be something different.  Whereas Dick would surpass Bruce in physical prowess, Tim begins by figuring out that Bruce Wayne is Batman and Bruce comes to believe that Tim might someday become the world’s greatest detective.  Tim had to grow too and so now the writers have a Robin who was raised by assassins and Batman can’t get rid of him because Damian is Bruce’s son.

Robin is ancillary to Batman’s story and replacing a supporting character is not the same as switching out the primary.  Most people don’t even know (and even fewer care) that Alfred was a replacement for Bruce’s first butler.  When it works the successful mantle passing for long established characters is the result of good storytelling.  The succession of Robins is the result of character development, and we don’t get told that this new Robin is better than all the others.  We get shown how the boy becomes the man while guided by a father figure who is too broken to give himself over to fatherhood, alienating each successive sidekick.  Expect for Jason, with Jason we get Death in the Family.  Oh, plus one of them is gay now, I guess, and maybe batman too.  DC cut that crap out and let’s not have another edition of necessary inference.

Barry Allen, Hal Jordan and Johnny Storm are probably the best cases for the mantle strategy (I bet someone reading this article had to look up and Alan Scott), along for the ride are Blue Beetle and Atom.

Not so fast Marvel, I said best.  I didn’t say good, and I certainly didn’t say appropriate.

The original Flash, Green Lantern, and Human Torch were golden age superheroes. Created by men who were born at the end of the 19^th or beginning of the 20^th century.  The Superhero became a cultural phenomenon of pre-war America, but the world moved on.  Boys shipped out to fight in the Pacific and European theaters.  When the war was over men came back to rebuild the lives they left behind.  The comic books they left in their rooms?  Mom donated those to the paper drives to help the war effort.  Maybe they’ll pick up some new ones from the drug store after work if they remember, but only if there’s time before that big date.  Sales of superhero comics cratered.  Even Wonder Woman (once a favorite of lonely sailors and GI’s) was cancelled.  More than a decade passed before DC revitalized itself for the space age with new characters taking on old names.  Green Lantern the railway worker with a magic ring gives way to Green Lantern the galactic cop with an alien ring.  The Flash got a new name to go with that new suit, no more trousers and doughboy helmet.  Years later Stan Lee creates Marvel’s first family and one of its members happens to share a name with an older forgotten character, I really don’t even see the Human torch as a mantle here, it’s more of a coincidence.  This was comic’s Silver Age, and it wasn’t a result of diversity quotas.  It was meeting the readers where they were, not where you told them they had to be.

Fans don’t care that actors have fulfilled their contracts and won’t be returning to their roles.  I think James Bond proves that a fandom will embrace a succession of different takes on the same character.  We even love to argue about who’s the best.

Fans do care that they and the characters they love be treated with respect, especially after a decade of making Marvel the biggest thing at the movies.

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