Comic book movies, the big blockbuster movie genre of the moment, are kind of racist. Not usually in an outspokenly abusive or judgemental fashion, but very much in the way that there are extremely limited roles for people of colour. Just look at X-Men, a series that dramatises a civil rights analogue with an almost entirely white cast. The reason for this lies largely in the fact that most of these movies are based on decades old properties. Comics enjoyed their Golden Age almost a century ago and very few movie franchises are based on characters any less established than those with their origins in the 1960s Silver Age. Naturally, these relics of an earlier age contain a cast of characters lacking in diversity and their 21st century movies usually reflect this. Both Marvel and DC have finally attempted to redress this imbalance by announcing future films with black superhero leads: Black Panther and Cyborg. Perhaps a more interesting development, though, is embodied by last week's announcement of the cast for DC's villain team-up Suicide Squad and its biggest star Will Smith. The charismatic A-lister will take in the role of deadly assassin and top marksman Deadshot, a character that has always been depicted as white. Perhaps inevitably, the news of this casting has been met with a certain amount of "I'm not racist, but..." commentary on message boards viewing the almost perpetually masked character's skin colour as a defining element of his character. Deadshot is, however, far from the first comic book character to be race swapped in coming to screen. As these ten examples show, sometimes the best actor for the job doesn't always share the same race as their comic book counterpart. And thanks to these race swaps the comic book movie world has become a whole lot more diverse and representative.
