Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, marvel

Brian Bendis Promises He's Not Whitesplaining The Death In Civil War II

Brian Bendis gave an interview to iO9's Evan Narcisse  – a man who had written about his own sense of loss reading the death of Jim Rhodes, Iron Man and War Machine, in Civil War II.

Addressing that, Bendis told Narcisse,

May I say, I agree with you. It hurt to write. We talked about, yes, an African-American man dying in this world that we're building. We had a lot of conversations about that as well. And then we came to the conclusion that by diversifying the line as much as [Marvel has], one of the traps would be to not put any of these characters in a situation that would be dangerous, right?

Evan talked about the context of the series and the death of Black Goliath in the first Civil War series in a similar fashion.

My biggest problem was, after losing Bill in the first one, it's such a well-worn annoying trope when it comes to black characters in pop culture and genre fiction. It's like, "Okay, yeah, we can lose him because whatever imagined numbers for our audience won't care about him."

Bendis: May I say you're completely right. I'm not colorblind and please understand, I'm not whitesplaining or mansplaining. Ask me questions and I'll tell you what I was feeling about it. I'm not saying it's the only way to feel or that this is the last statement on the subject, because I don't think it is at all.

He also suggests that, indeed, Riri may be the new War Machine.

I appreciate that. So as a bit of a segue, it seems that you're setting things up for the new character Ri Ri to potentially take on the War Machine mantle in Invincible Iron Man.

Bendis: Yeah. Perfect example, by the way of what I'm talking about. There's a lot more going on in the books than just that. I'm sorry. Go ask your question.

Of course, there's more death to come. And while we at Bleeding Cool may have abandoned our first theory as to who the Fallen and the Accused may be, our second choice is looking more and more possible – especially looking at details in this cover to Civil War II: Choosing Sides…

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