>>6351276You're Marvel or DC, and people are crying out for you to make your casts more diverse. Which of these two options do you go for?
1: Make new heroes, villains, and side characters, investing time and money into making high quality characters that readers respond to and enjoy, pay to have them put in video games and movies and have toys made of them.
2: Take an existing character and either make them a minority or a woman, or take a minority or woman character and give them a super identity.
The first is obviously the choice that takes more work, and thus more money, and runs the risk of not working. Look at Magog or Harvest over at DC. I don't even know of any attempts at new characters at Marvel in the past few years.
The second choice is far easier. You have a pre-existing name and icon, like Venom or Ghost Rider or Ms. Marvel, and you plug a new character into that. You inject new blood and attract new readership, plus you have the benefit of the already existing support of old concepts, readers, and creators. When it goes really well, you end up with a new iconic take on the character like Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, or Flash Thompson. When it goes poorly, you end up with shit like Lady Thor or, honestly, 90% of the hot takes on Jimmie Olsen over the years.
"Creators" is an important word to remember, too. When you make any character for the Big Two, they own that character going forward, and history shows they'll show you no love for your work. Look at what happened to Gary Friedrich or Alan Moore. So writers and artists willing to put in the work to create a totally new character, which is to say a completely new IP, are likely to take it to one of the lesser companies where they can control the rights personally.
This, by the way, is why you can't just make new diverse characters/casts in modern comics, it's why you sorta *have* to get rid of an old (usually) white (usually) male (usually) straight character to do that.
