These are fraught days for the superhero business. Consider the rebooted Wonder Woman franchise. Feminists saw the movie trailer and promptly decried not the sexist notion that a Hun-killing demigoddess would cavort in a strapless bustier but that the actress playing the Amazonian princess had shaved under her arms.
As those great philosophers David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel said, there’s a fine line between stupid and clever. That goes double when dealing with those modern obsessions, gender and race. Even when it’s just the stuff of comic books.
The hipsters and delayed adolescents among us will know all about Marvel Comics’ ongoing efforts to diversify its lineup of superheroes: a black female Iron Man, a biracial Spider-Man, the teenage Muslim Ms. Marvel, and America Chavez, now “the first lesbian Latina superhero,” as CNN puts it, who “attends Sotomayor University, and between classes, . . . picks fights with evil aliens.” (We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re talking about space aliens.)
But are you familiar with the company’s latest action hero? His secret identity is the decidedly unflashy David Gabriel, but his alter-ego is “Marvel’s Vice President of Sales.” His superpower is nothing so commonplace as invisibility, heat vision, or telekinesis. Gabriel has the remarkable ability—without even donning cape or mask—to question the commercial appeal of his company’s ethnically and sexually diverse characters and yet emerge unscathed from the cauldron of modern identity politics. Amazing!
Just watch him in action, saying the unsayable: “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” Gabriel recently told retailers, according to Entertainment Weekly. “They didn’t want female characters out there. . . . We had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.”
The hordes of the Twitter underworld attacked, but Gabriel escaped, Mystique-style, by quickly shape-shifting. In a superhuman follow-up statement, he said, “Contrary to what some said about characters ‘not working,’ ” (you have to love that some said) “our fans and retailers ARE excited about these new heroes. And let me be clear, our new heroes are not going anywhere! We are proud and excited to keep introducing unique characters that reflect new voices and new experiences.”
The success of new characters turns in part on zippy superhero names, and we’re not convinced “Marvel’s Vice President for Sales” does justice to this exciting new Gabriel character. How about, instead, “Flak-Catcher”?
