@beardalaxy Why not?
@LoriQuaid I'm sure that's another factor, but this was a thing long before Stan Lee, and not only in Marvel Comics either.
@dickflatteningenthusiast In technical fields there is the concept of "technical debt" that must be repaid, so it's not so easy to simply step into the shoes of a surgeon or mechanic.
As a software engineer, I can use any tool, but those I'm not familiar with will come with technical debt in the form of costly rewriting of code and optimizations at a later date.
But in a supportive environment, with the required knowledge readily available, a competent apprentice will absolutely outperform all the diversity hires in the room within 3 weeks or less.
I've seen it happen many times.
@GeriAQuin Scar's real name is Taka, a Swahili word meaning 'dirt' or 'rubbish', which explains why he went along with "Scar".
@LoriQuaid The reason for this is very simple:
It was often secondary characters that had orange hair, as an easy way to distinguish them from the main, and background characters.
This sort of thing is used a lot in comic, and anime too.
Fast-forward to current year, and "the message" is pushed into every piece of media.
Slowly at first... Turning a main character black would be too much even for the normie fans.
So a secondary character, one that was often ginger/red-head was race-swapped instead.
They would've done it with a main character if they thought it would work, but Miles Morales (who still isn't Spider-man, and never will be) proved it cannot be done.
That is why lead characters are now being replaced entirely.
Superman is succeded by his gay son, Hawkeye has a daughter (probably gay too, most people in comics are these days), Ironman is killed-off and the black female Ironheart takes his place, etc...
Elon Musk shares a post on "gingercide" in popular media in which red-headed characters are no longer are played by red-heads
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1814071041146474785
I draw, code, and make memes sometimes.