Earth’s Whitey-est Heroes

The Avengers includes a man in an invincible suit of armor, a lady assassin, an archer, a super-soldier, the Viking God of Thunder and a Hulk. Something they don’t have, though, is a lot of diversity. That’s not necessarily a flaw, but it does kind of stick out that – in a movie that trades heavily on themes of teamwork and mutual acceptance – when The Avengers finally assemble in New York for the big showdown, their onscreen ranks count only one woman, and the only “person of color” is green.

Not that the film is a complete whitewash/sausage-fest: Colbie Smulders’ Agent Hill gets a fairly visible role, though she never exits the S.H.I.E.L.D. Hellicarrier and isn’t technically an Avenger herself. Likewise, Gwyneth Paltrow continues to play a key support role to Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, but otherwise she’s strictly a civilian. And one would be remiss not to mention that Samuel L. Jackson’s African-American revamp of Nick Fury looms large over the entire Marvel Movieverse – both because it’s true and because mentioning it right at the beginning here gives me the chance to see how many people don’t bother to read the article before hurrying down to comments to bang out some variation on “Shut up! They made Nick Fury black, isn’t that enough?”

Just as this observation isn’t innately critical, it’s also not indicative of anything sinister on the filmmakers’ part. Superhero movies, by and large, have a diversity problem because the comics they’re based on historically had diversity problems. However, movies aren’t required to follow every detail of their source material; just because it took a while for The Avengers comic books to (for lack of a better word) integrate doesn’t mean the movies have to wait, too.

With that in mind, here’s a quick selection of characters from the House of Ideas’ vault that might be useful in helping future Avengers installments become – if nothing else – a little more reflective of the ever-broadening audiences that have embraced them to such an unprecedented degree.

War Machine

Overheard at a recent Avengers showing: “How come they didn’t ask Black Iron Man to join?” Guy kind of has a point.

Jim Rhodes (aka “War Machine”) is a staple of both Iron Man and Avengers comic continuity, and played a major supporting role in both Iron Man movies. When you think about it, given the recurring story point that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s problem with Iron Man is strictly Tony Stark’s bad attitude, the idea that they didn’t recruit the guy who has all of Iron Man’s powers, more onboard weapons and is already an enlisted military professional is something of a plot hole.

Aside from being a cool character that audiences are already familiar with, War Machine offers the same technical benefits that Iron Man and Hulk do. Because their “action scene” forms can be accomplished via CGI and stunt-performers under the mask, it’s that much easier to schedule the actors.

Luke Cage

Obvious choice is obvious. Gifted with bulletproof skin and unbreakable everything else by an experiment conducted on him while in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, Cage (aka “Power Man”) was a 70s Marvel fixture who re-emerged in the early-2000s as a prominent figure and high-ranking member of multiple re-tooled Avengers teams. People have been asking for a Luke Cage movie since Marvel started this ball rolling, but for a while it looked like he’d instead be making his debut in the planned Alias: Jessica Jones TV series. But since that show is no longer moving forward, (he appears to be free again – maybe for his own movie, maybe for Avenger-hood.

The biggest plus with Cage as a feature film character, from where I sit, is that he brings a ready-made story arc with him. His original shtick in the comics was being a self-titled “Hero For Hire” – rather than wander New York looking for wrongs to right, Luke Cage worked on commission. Guy who’s in it for the money finds something more valuable to fight for? There’s your movie(s), right there.

Spider-Woman

Let’s get real for a moment: It’s kind of a problem that there are only two prominent women in The Avengers, and they never actually speak to one another. This is an especially glaring issue when one considers that Marvel in general and Avengers-lore in particular is crawling with noteworthy female heroes. Not only would Spider-Woman (real name: Jessica Drew) be a welcome addition to the cast, she’d also be a fun chance for Marvel/Disney to get some gags off at rival studio Sony’s expense.

See, despite the name, Spider-Woman has no connection to her better known Avengers-ineligible counterpart Spider-Man – making her a great opportunity for Marvel Films to add a “Spider-Person” to the roster and to perhaps have some fun at the expense of the “why isn’t Peter Parker here?” elephant in the room. “Spider-Woman, huh? Any relation to…” “Nope, just a name thing. Never even met the guy.” Audiences would laugh, fans would enjoy the implication that “you know who” is actually out there, somewhere, in Avengers-land.

White Tiger

Originating as part of a 1970s kung fu anthology series, White Hector (real name: Hector Ayala) is primarily notable for being Marvel’s first Hispanic hero and also the first (American) superhero to hail from Puerto Rico. He gets his abilities from three magical amulets which, when worn together, increase his martial arts skills to superhuman levels. And, if Marvel was in the mood to kill two birds with one stone, the current bearer of the White Tiger mantle happens to be Hector’s niece, Angela Del Toro.

Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu

Before you ask: Yes, Marvel does have plenty of Asian characters who aren’t archetypal martial artists. Problematically, most of them tend to be tied to either the X-Men or Daredevil universes, so they won’t be turning up near The Avengers any time soon.

In any case, while on the surface Shang-Chi is little more than an ersatz Kane (from Kung Fu), he brings some unique elements to the table. Primarily, he’s supposed to be the estranged son of Sax Rohmer’s pulp-fiction supervillain Fu Manchu, which raises some interesting continuity issues in and of itself. Marvel Studios is getting into business with the Chinese movie industry in a big way recently, so I wouldn’t call it at all unlikely that this fellow wouldn’t show up in some form sooner or later.

Misty Knight

You may be noticing a trend here, namely that Marvel did much of its “diversity hiring” in its mid-70s kung fu books. So too it is with Misty Knight, an African-American policewoman who loses an arm in a bomb attack. Gifted with a bionic adamantium/diamond replacement (comics!) courtesy of Tony “Iron Man” Stark (there’s your movie connection, right there), she took up a new career as a mercenary, superheroine and all-around badass. She’s also the key romantic interest of Danny Rand, aka “Iron-Fist” – another frequently-touted Avengers candidate – which was kind of a big deal at one point as very few interracial relationships had been portrayed in comics at the time.

The Black Panther

A few years back I was at a friend’s party and joined some guests at playing through a few levels of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. One of my teammates was picking my brain (I’d been answering a lot of the in-game trivia) about the various black superheroes who were playable in the game that he hadn’t heard of – the guest was, himself, black and had been under the impression that black superheroes were limited to Blade and the “cartoon version” of Green Lantern. When it came time to explain Black Panther in a nutshell, the best I could come up with was: “Remember Coming to America? That guy – if he was also Batman.”

T’Challa isn’t just a superhero, he’s a king – the ruler of Wakanda, an isolated African nation that maintains a surface façade of being a primitive jungle tribe but is actually a super-advanced secret civilization hidden underground. In addition to his political duties, T’Challa acts both as his people’s hands-on protector and international do-gooder using the mantle of The Black Panther. Bear in mind, it’s been long-assumed that Panther would probably wind up with his own movie before it was time to start talking about team-ups.

Bob Chipman is a film critic and independent filmmaker. If you’ve heard of him before, you have officially been spending way too much time on the internet.