Soxafloppin said:
I like the idea of Falcon becoming Captain America eventually (judging purely from Cap2), not sure about female Thor, though I'l admit thats a pretty cool character design.
Personally I think the best way to increase diversity is to push there excising minorities characters and create new ones and push those. It just feels weak to me if they truely believe the only way to to make a black of female character popular is to pass down a mantle previously held by a white male.
The problem is that they push existing and new characters all the time, but they run into inertia, basically the WoW effect. Just like no MMO can ever match the sheer content of World of Warcraft because it's trying to compete with a product that is 10 years old, has 4 large expansion packs behind it, and 10 years of name recognition in the MMO market.
DC and Marvel are both littered with dozens or hundreds of B,C, and D-list characters, a lot of whom were attempts to push new angles and character archetypes in new directions. Yet, none of them broke into the fabled A-lister territory, because they can't compete with the 50,60,70+ years of history that some of these characters have.
Having a big name A-lister "pass the mantle" has been a staple of comic books for 30+ years, it's an old, well-known trick, and it keeps happening because it works. Just like, how one of the Robins becomes Batman for a year or two, or Bucky was Captain America for awhile, or when Black Panther temporarily took over for Bullseye, giving a lesser known character the title of a more popular character puts that character in to the spotlight. Say you don't like it as much as you want, but comic book companies don't want to always take the risk of building a new character, advertising the shit out of them, then maybe having them reach b-list status after a decade or two with a one in a million chance of them maybe being recognized alongside the A-listers (although never actually reaching their level).
Michael Morales as the Ultimate Spider man, managed to garner more sales, and character recognition in his few short years than dozens and dozens of dedicated characters created to be new, diverse and interesting. These changes are always, always temporary, and when they work, the characters who temporarily held the mantle often become bigger parts of their universe and take some of that popularity and inertia of the bigger name character with them when everything reverts back to the way it was before.
Steve Rogers will eventually get his power back and become Captain America again, and if the temporary Avengers team does well, when Sam Wilson becomes the Falcon again, he will see a boost in popularity and relevence that will basically rocket him far above "original" characters that have been fighting to break into the big leagues for decades now.
One of the sad facts of advertising, is that people say they want originality, but when actually confronted with what to spend their money on the majority will go for what's familiar pretty much every time. To put it another way, a year or two as Captain America will do more for the Falcon's fame and notoriety than what 2 decades of team-ups, series, and crossovers did for Luke Cage.
