Non-controversial statement: Miles Morales is a fine character. Controversial statement:
Riri WIlliams is a fine character. OKAY, IT’S TIME TO LOSE SOME SUBSCRIBERS!
Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake!
Marvel’s recent push for diversity in comics has gotten got equal amounts of backlash and
praise, but one of the more contentious decisions is a character named Riri Williams. Now, it’s
not uncommon to hear people say that characters like Kamala Khan and Miles Morales are how
you do diverse characters right and Riri... just isn’t.
Now, I am by no means saying that Riri is a great character. In fact, she’s my least
favorite of Marvel’s recent additions, and she has a lot of problems from a storytelling
perspective, but I think it’s a little interesting that a lot of the major criticisms that she
gets are the same ones that Miles Morales first got when he was introduced. So I wanna
take a look at both characters side by side and figure out what the REAL issue is and
why Miles Morales gets a free pass while Riri is seemingly demonized. So, let’s take a
look.
So why compare these two in particular? Well, Miles and Riri have much more in common than
just the color of their skin. In fact, they were both created by the same guy, Brian Michael
Bendis. I feel that since both characters come from the same writer at the same company,
this makes figuring out what works and doesn’t work for the respective characters a lot easier.
If you spend even a small amount of time in the online comic book community, it’s not
hard to find backlash against Riri. However, it seems like after a while, the major complaints
boil down to three seemingly universal points, she was made to pander to minorities, she’s
an unknown kid replacing a main established character, and of course, she’s a Mary Sue.
Miles Morales on the other hand is seen as a strong character that has become a staple
of the Spider-Man mythos and a major name in Marvel Comics as a whole. But… he literally
embodies those complaints as well.
Let’s start off with the “pandering”. Both characters’ origins have one thing
in common, Bendis’ strong desire for there to be more diversity in comics, especially
for his two black adopted daughters. After Miles Morales’ first appearance in Ultimate
Fallout #4 in 2011, Bendis said in an interview with USA Today regarding his children quote
"Wouldn't it be nice for them to have a character or a hero that speaks to them as much as Peter
Parker has spoken to so many children?"
That right there pretty much cements that a big reason Miles was created was to push
diversity and dude, there was backlash! When Marvel gave the exclusive reveal to USA Today
the comments were… basically the same one’s that you’d see on Twitter and YouTube comments
about the current era of Marvel. Things like “More politically correct stupidity! If
the Spider Man series I read in the Sunday papers EVER changes from good ole white Peter
Parker, I’ll simply cease to read it. If the PC nuts want to have super heros who represent
other ethnic groups along with various sexual perversions then let them create new ones
from scratch and leave our time cherished traditional heros alone!”
and
“Shame on Marvel Comics! This is not diversity; this is a disgrace! Spiderman was Peter Parker,
and Peter Parker was white. Create a new character if you want to prove that Marvel Comics is
“diverse”. Minorities are typically less than 18% of the population, but they seem
to get nearly 100% of the history. Why should white children not have a comic book hero
that they can identify with?”
But that was 2011, and although things were heated it’s not nearly as toxic as the more
modern era of Marvel Comics. So how did we get here? Well 2014 was where things started
to change thanks to a delightful character named Kamala Khan. Kamala was a brand new
Pakistani character who took over the mantle of Ms. Marvel, a B-list superhero, but still
significant enough to make a splash and man oh man, was it a splash. Kamala’s Ms. Marvel
series was a HUGE success, going so far as to get SEVEN printings. That is super rare
even for big established A-list heroes and massive crossover events!
Kamala became a big deal for Muslim, Pakistani, and female readers along with actively standing
up against bigotry and hate. In fact, people seeing themselves in Kamala and taking pictures
aligning her face in the debut cover became a minor movement. Hell, I even took part in
it! Because of her success, it seemed like Marvel wanted to make lightning strike twice…or
more… and they introduced a new Latino Ghost Rider in the form of Robbie Reyes along with
having Jane Foster and Sam Wilson taking up the mantles of Thor and Captain America respectively
all in the same year!
Your mileage might vary as per the perceived quality of these characters, but it’s clear
that Marvel’s push for diversity directly followed Kamala’s success. However, backlash
was usually focused on specific characters, but by the time that 2016 rolled around, vocal
naysayers focused on critiquing Marvel’s diversity push as a whole. In an interview
with Syfy in 2016, Bendis commented, saying quote "It’s not a ‘process'. It’s just
a bunch of writers and artists and editors making comics that reflects the world they
live in."
Really though, that doesn’t change the fact that many fans were upset, but I find myself
agreeing a lot with something Bendis said in an interview with Newsarama in 2011. ”Not
everybody wants the same thing. Not any one culture or sexuality wants the same thing
out of their comic books. I know that can be distressing for some, but that's what's
cool, and that's why there are so many different comic books.”
Plenty of people will say that mentality is pandering, but honestly, I feel like that’s
too strong of a word, at the very least for Miles and Riri. I mean one of the main reasons
Bendis created the characters was his desire to reflect his real world and create characters
that his daughters could look up to. To me, that doesn’t seem like pandering. That seems
like writing what you know in much the same way that most of Marvel’s books take place
in New York because there’s where most writers lived when creating them.
Not everybody wants the same thing and while some fans have been more than vocal about
their dislike for diverse characters, there’s no doubt that these heroes have meant a lot
to people in the black community with dozens of people cosplaying as Miles and Riri and
some MIT students even created a short fan film about Riri! For the most part, they’ve
resonated with their target audience. If that’s pandering then so what? If people like them
then what’s so bad about letting people just like the things they like?
This brings me to the next major criticism that Riri is constantly getting, that she’s
a Mary Sue. For those who aren’t familiar, a Mary Sue is an insult to a character, but
what it actually MEANS isn’t that well defined. TV Tropes tries to broadly define it as when
a character is overly important in a story, overly-skilled, or over-idealized. The problem
though is that is so broad that pretty much every fictional character can fall into it
which is why it seems like the modern definition boils down to “Character I don’t like,
but by using a technical term, my criticism looks like it has more validity.”
It can be easily argued that Spider-Man and Iron Man are Mary Sues. After all, a lot of
the Marvel universe seems to revolve around Peter Parker, he is constantly hooking up
with very hot girls and he’s still super-duper smart. Tony Stark, on the other hand is one
of the smartest and richest people on the planet and owns a massive conglomerate. If
the characters that Miles and Riri are replacing can already be defined as Mary Sues then why
would it matter if they’re just being swapped out with other ones who just happen to be
a bit younger?
To me, it seems like people would argue there are varying degrees of Mary Sue...ness and
what makes Riri more of one than Tony is the third major complaint about her, she’s an
unknown kid replacing a main established character. First of all, she’s not replacing Iron Man.
Her name is Ironheart. Publication title does not always equal hero name. However, even
if you’re talking about replacing the established main character of the series with a brand
new character then, didn’t Miles do the exact same thing?
Hell, I’d argue that Riri was less of an unknown character than Miles. I mean she actually
interacted with Tony Stark before becoming Ironheart and sort of got his blessing to
carry on when Tony gave her an A.I. version of his digital consciousness.
While Miles DID eventually get the blessing of both the main universe and Ultimate Universe
Peter Parkers, he took up the mantle of Spider-Man without knowing ANYONE in the established
Spider-Man mythos. While Riri worked… (Wow, that’s a tongue twister) *Cough* While Riri
worked to build her suit by reverse engineering Tony’s scrap, Miles just conveniently got
stung by another spider from the same line of experiments as the one that bit Peter Parker.
However, I think that’s the real reason why Miles works as such a better character.
Riri mostly picks up where Tony left off, dealing with his A.I. F.R.I.D.A.Y. and his
personal assistant, Mary Jane. Yet Miles is a VERY fleshed out individual with his own
world of characters and is more detached from the legacy of the character he is replacing.
Any character taking over a mantle is going to inevitably be judged in comparison to their
predecessor, but the best ones are usually already heavily involved in the mythos or
are separate enough that they can do their own thing. Riri had a bad introduction there
is no doubt about that. She was brought into the Iron Man canon for a bit, but Bendis putting
Tony in a coma so quickly after introducing Riri and having her replace him felt a little
cheap. It also didn’t help that her own bubble of characters was so small that she
couldn’t really do her own thing and she kind of HAD to just piggyback off of the established
Iron Man characters.
There’s also the fact that you can just tell that Riri is temporary. Miles had the
benefit of first being introduced in an alternate universe so he always felt like he had staying
power. After all, they couldn’t totally alienate TOO many fans by having a different
Spider-Man since Peter was still swinging in the main universe. Bendis confirmed that
Marvel wasn’t planning on making Miles a temporary character since in an interview
with Newsarama following Miles’ debut, he said quote “I know that sometimes things
feel a little stunt-y, especially when something explodes like this, but I can tell you from
my heart of hearts that it was story-first for years, and once we knew that we had something
we were really proud of, absolutely we let people know, and if people want to jump on
the story, great.”
However, Miles Morales didn’t JUST work because he was in an alternate universe. Kamala
Khan for example always felt like she had staying power since Carol Danvers who had
the role of Ms. Marvel prior ALSO feels like she’s permanently going to stick in her
current Captain Marvel role, especially since Mar-Vell looks like he is going to stay Uncle
Ben dead.
For Riri, we all know that Tony was coming back so readers are going to naturally feel
less motivated to get interested in her story. She’s a decent character and all, but it
never feels like Marvel is committed to her in the same sense as Kamala or Miles and that
as soon as Tony gets back, she’ll be a background Iron Man character in much the same way as
Pepper Potts is in the current continuity.
Ultimately though, I feel like the biggest problem people have with Riri is that she’s
new because we are CONSTANTLY seeing the cycle of fanboy rage over new things. When it comes
to nerdy properties, nobody seems to hate new additions more than fans.
Miles Morales isn’t intrinsically a better character. When he was new, he went through
the same cycle of hate that every new diverse character also goes through. Eventually though,
the haters quieted down and Miles was able to win over more readers with quality books.
It’s clearly paid off with Miles becoming a MASSIVELY popular character and even headlining
the movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The problem is that people buy n large are
too quick to judge ANY new characters or changes to their status-quo and frequently pass judgement
before they’re even given a chance to grow as a character!
Diverse or not, many fans are comfortable with the state of their hobbies and most changes
scare them which leads to harsh judgements before they even truly give the change a chance.
Riri is far from a perfect character, again she is my least favourite of Marvel’s new
ones, but given the opportunity to grow or even if handled by a different creative team,
she could really turn into something great over time. Yet as fans keep focusing on the
same cycle of negativity that ultimately boils down to nothing and instead put that energy
into more legitimate criticisms, then maybe we can grow as a community and help push the
medium we love in a direction that we can all appreciate.
Like I said in the video already, these are not the only criticisms Riri has leveled against
her, these are just the most common ones that I have personally seen, but for the love of
god, please don’t turn the comments into “RAH RAH SJW RAH!” I think my audience
is better than that and we can have respectful conversation. Please don’t disappoint me.
But if you liked this video then please consider subscribing or even watching another one,
in fact if you liked this video then you might like our complete history on Miles Morales
or at least the complete history at the time that it was made. But at the very least I
hope you learned a little something new from a different perspective and maybe, I’ll
see you next time.