What is a change you would make to a comic character or their story that you think would be rad but make comic fans big mad?

My take? My thing that I think would be rad but enrage comic fans? In fact, this is my pick BECAUSE it would make them furious.

Keep Superman as his white passing alien self...

But make the Kents black.

I'm gonna expand on this a bit more. Think about what that says within the narrative of Superman and his upbringing. Superman's humanity, his most vaunted trait is supposed to come from his upright upbringing in Kansas. Well speaking as someone from the midwest let me tell you...

that kind of thing gets harder and harder to believe when you live in what is MAGA country in so many ways. A Superman raised in that kind of environment has a much better chance of growing up into a Brightburn style monster than the blue boy scout.

But if you get a Superman who's life is informed by black parents and the things they have to go through learning about privilege first hand by seeing how he gets treated differently than the adopted parents who love him? That breeds a supes who loathes injustice and has seen...

incredible restraint modeled for him his entire life. Also shows EXACTLY how he learns to switch between his Clark Kent and Superman personas. He sees Johnathan Kent model that for him in the different ways he interacts with the small collection of black farmers in Smallville...

And the dominant white power structure that probably exists in a rural Kansas farming community.

Also a nice excuse to bring back a "Superman vs the Klan" story REAL easy. In my head this version of Supes is also sneakier about how he uses his powers in Smallville.

Righting wrongs and solving town problems as quietly as possible rather than calling particular attention to himself. Again, learning from black folks how to move silently lest the power structures start looking too close.

And again, Superman's biggest thing is his humanity that he learned from his parents. Having those lessons instilled by folks who the US regularly treats as not human could make for some really potent storytelling in the right hands.

But here's the thing, you can't turn the Kents into Magical Negro characters to make this work. They need to be 3-D and as real as possible or none of this works. They need to be allowed to be human, flawed and still damn good people. And they need to be allowed to be angry.

Because that's another important element in this I think, of how Supes has to learn to manage what he can do.

And that's my Ted Talk about why this would be great even though it would absolutely enrage a segment of comics fandom but could be great if done correctly.