'What If?...Miles Morales' Thor Comic Accused Of Racist Tropes

But some of the takeaways from the cringey comic book are misguided at best.

Writing in Gizmodo, Sabina Graves directs us to a bit of a minor controversy in the world of comic books. There’s a series of What If…? Miles Morales comics that’s been coming out recently that asks ‘What if Miles Morales were [insert hero here]?’

The heroes so far have been Captain America, Wolverine, Hulk and Thor—and it’s that last one that has caused a bit of a stir. The comic was written by Yehudi Mercado and is widely agreed to be quite the cringe-fest, filled with all kinds of tropes you might associate with urban black culture. It may be well-intended, but it’s not hard how many have taken it as more than a little racist.

Miles Morales as Thor wears high-top sneakers and a hoodie. His hair is frosted blond at the tips with thunderbolts shaved into the fade. Instead of poetic verse, the narration is really, really bad rap. There are lines like:

“Of all the Five Realms, Asgard is his hood.”

Graffiti is everywhere, even on his hammer. It’s . . . a lot.

Here are a couple pages so you can see for yourself:

Mercado has felt the full brunt of a widespread backlash in the fandom and media and has apologized, posting this statement to Twitter:

I’ve taken the last few days to step back and listen, and I acknowledge your criticism for my recent issue of What If...Miles Morales was Thor. While I’ve lived a different experience through my own Jewish and Mexican background, I still know inauthenticity hurts, and I’m sorry this failed on that front. I’ve appreciated hearing and learning from my Black and Puerto Rican comics peers and hope to use this moment to help promote better authenticity. I’m also going to donate what Marvel paid me to the Brooklyn Book Bodega, which works to build literacy and get more books to kids in NYC.

This is a good apology for something that I don’t think was meant as a slight to the black community, and that certainly isn’t all Mercado’s fault to begin with. Surely someone else at Marvel—someone in charge, perhaps, an editor?—should have spotted the issues with this issue and sent it in for some rewrites before it saw the light of day.

But I think some of the reaction to this admittedly cringey comic is illustrative in its own way. Take, for instance, the Gizmodo piece. Graves writes:

“The comic—What If...? Miles Morales—was met with backlash over writer Yehudi Mercado’s inauthentic depiction of the character, while also fueling concerns as to why Marvel would, at this point, hire a non-Black writer for the comic in the first place.”

This is wrongheaded for two reasons:

First, I don’t think only black writers should write black characters anymore than I think only white writers should write white characters. We start race-gating when we make this kind of bizarre demand. Sabina Graves isn’t black, but here she is writing about Miles Morales. Maybe only black bloggers should be allowed to comment on this subject?

No?

Right, that’s stupid. Plenty of non-black comic book writers have written black characters authentically and plenty of black writers have written non-black characters authentically. While it’s certainly helpful to have that perspective—and hopefully more and more POC write comics and lend authenticity to these characters and stories—it’s also okay to have racial crossover. Let’s not tip-toe toward segregation for the “right reasons” okay?

What if a black author had created this comic? Would it still be considered racist? What if a white person had written a much better version of this that wasn’t at all cringey or insensitive? The point is, while it’s probably a very good idea to have black writers and artists involved in the creation of these stories, we shouldn’t start limiting who writes what based on race—for obvious reasons.

Second, Miles Morales is half-black and half-Latino (sorry, folks, out of respect for literally every Latino person I’ve ever talked to I refuse to use Latinx), aka Afro-Latino. So why would it be okay for a black comic book writer to write this comic but it’s not okay for Mercado, who is Jewish and Latino? Why should only black people write this character rather than Latino people? That seems . . . odd.

(Granted, Morales is part Puerto Rican whereas Mercado has Mexican roots but when we’re using words like “black” and “white” we’re often tossing regional differences to the winds).

Anyways, I just think we often take the wrong lessons from these controversies. Yes, please, let’s avoid this kind of crap in the future, but let’s not cordon one another off into little race bubbles where we’re all just in charge of our own race’s ‘creative voice’ because that’s kind of what the white supremacists want, isn’t it?

Then again, um, any comic that includes the line ‘By Odin’s fade’ should be roundly criticized and have many fingers wagged at it because are you friggin serious people?

I will say it is mildly funny that Miles-Thor says ‘Hammer Time!’ when he smites people with Mjonir though. I mean, it’s dumb but if that was the only problem with this comic it wouldn’t be so bad.

Thanks for reading and once again I apologize for the infrequency of this newsletter lately. I have written like five other things that I ended up unhappy with and never published, for what it’s worth. I’ve also been sick with COVID-19 for the last couple weeks which hasn’t helped my creative output in the slightest. Sigh.