Well, there is a substantial differance in the origins of the characters that passed their mantles on than Spider Man. Spider Man is one dude who took on a costumed identity and has been a loner. The characters that have passed their mantles onto other heroes did so as part of some major event usually, before the status quo was reverted, OR passed it onto a sidekick that had been around for years beforehand. For example The Flash mantle passed on to "Kid Flash". Batman's mantle has passed to other characters like Azrael temporarily in the past, and so on.Logan Westbrook said:
One can't really say there is much of anything here but a PC attention grab, it's not like this new guy has spent a decade of comic's continuity running around as Kid Spidey or something and is having the mantle passed on after a long period of fan acceptance. That's incidently another common factor to things like having Rhodey fill in for Iron Man for a while, a character who was popular enough in his own right to get his own heroic identity even after the mantle reverted (like it always does).
As far as the comics landscape being "white as the driven snow", well that's debatable on a lot of levels, and to be honest you really have to be a kind of politically correct extremist to even see that as a bad thing to begin with. It's important to understand that while it might be changing as the Latino population grows to outnumber the whites, that whites ARE the majority in the US and have been for decades, it only makes sense that most characters created for a largely white audience and having adventures in a largely white society are going to be well... white. Seeing a major minority character once in a blue moon is a pretty accurate representation on a lot of levels, as the old "stereotype" of having a token minority member on every super team is still a massively disproportionate representation, and it gets kind of ridiculous when you start seeing every minority demanding that there be a character like them included. While uncommon, there have been black comic characters headlining for quite a while. Even if not everyone likes or accepts them, just mentioning Spawn, Storm, and Luke Cage is enough to point to a pretty fair representation given the relative population, especially as it's been over a number of decades.
What's more there is also the issue of the lack of minorities involved in things like writing and artwork. The lack of black, hispanic, indian, or whatever group characters has a lot to do with the lack of people in those groups creating them. Like it or not education is NOT a big deal to members of various minority groups, as Bill Cosby (PHD In Children's Education) has pointed out on numerous occasions, the big problem with Black America is Black America not wanting to assimilate into society and take advantage of the oppertuinities given to them. When becoming educated is seeing as a sign of "selling out" or becoming a Ho Ho (black on the outside, white on the inside) that right there explains a lot of the problems in society. People do things like line up to donate computers and textbooks to schools in poor ethnic neighborhoods, but when the people there vandalize, steal, and destroy them (oftentimes to make a point) it really doesn't matter. It's not a popular point with the left wing, but it touches on a LOT of issues. For blacks, and other minority groups, to have a bigger representation in the media, you need to see enough of them becoming educated, going into the arts, and them competing for those jobs. Just handing a guy a job for the sake of affrimitive action doesn't create a quality product that is going to succeed in the public. You need to have the tens of thousands who want to be creators of things like comic books, where like other fanboys the majority fail (for numerous reasons) but those tiny handfuls eventually crawl to the top of the rat race and put out the big products.
Politically correct pandering like making Spider Man a black/latino half breed does nothing except make a point for liberals to cheer to, and slot a lot of people in the core audience off. This isn't a character that was gradually developed to popularity that way. To see a real change and decent characters of thise sort is not something that can just be snapped into place, but something that has to happen over a period of decades once you have the basic artistic population in place.
To put things into perspective look at the representation that asians have in comics, and heck, fandom in general. That didn't happen overnight because some guy decided "oh hey, let's suddenly decide that Batman is now a Japanese guy", no it happened due to generations of artists working on comic books, cartoons, and sci-fi and fantasy shows. Japan moved slowly up from "Lol, that's pathetic" to producing a quality product which entered the international market. You started seeing more and more people from Asia in general getting involved, and now you see a lot of cross pollination between eastern manga and western comics with both influacing each other heavily (even if one can argue that Western fantasy inspired most Anime and Manga to begin with, but that's another discussion).
See, even if the Latino population manages to outnumber the white population in the next decade as many people predict, you aren't going to see major changes to the media and things like comics if none of those people are artists, writers, and creators.
Look at it this way, if you basically argue that most "serious" anime and manga started to become noticed in the 1980s by a western fringe, that's 30 years before we started to flat out see the influance that is present now. What this means is that if we were to start seeing some serious black and latino creators getting involved now, give them a say 5 years to start producing the basics, and then in another 30 years we might see some major characters like a "Spider Man" that are politically correct pandering (albiet it will be unique creations). Someone who is ultra left wing might blanch at the 30 year figure, not to mention the massive societal changes I'm talking about, but that's just the way things are. This kind of thing has to progressively develop over a period of time, stunts like the current one with Spider Man are just disgusting attempts at rabble rousing.
I'll be blunt, if Marvel wants to do some nice things for a minority prescene in comics, how about going out there to discover and recruit minority artists? Create some large scholorships with all of that massive movie money (if they are out there I don't know about them). Get kids thinking that they can make millions by being able to drawer or write really well as opposed to jump at a basketball hoop or rhyme to a beat. It might not get the same kind of liberal gawking and media attention, but it will have a hundred times the influance that a ridiculous stunt like this will.
