Diversifying the Marvel Universe
The Marvel Universe is generally associated with comic book nerds — especially white, male comic book nerds. But since Marvel Entertainment has ruled the world’s box office with adaptations of their comics — Black Panther opens worldwide this week — the company has started to diversify their characters and draw every background into their Marvel Universe.
Marvel’s director of Content and Character Development is Sana Amanat, and her job is to make sure that the company is encouraging inclusion and diversity in their line-up of superheroes. Amanat, a Pakistani-American, is known best for editing stories involving Captain Marvel and Hawkeye, along with co-creating the highly successful Ms Marvel — a Muslim Pakistani-American teenager named Kamala Khan.
Life talks to Amanat about working at Marvel and how the company is hoping to create more inclusive and multi-dimensional characters.
So what do you do at Marvel?
My job is in comics. That’s the heart and soul of the Marvel Universe. I work with people across the company in developing some of our content and characters. My role is to make sure that we are constantly elevating the characters and the content we have within the comic world and across all other platforms.
For you, what are the core characteristics of a superhero?
I think for me it’s sort of balancing an individual’s superhero-like bombastic, fantastic, amazing aspirational qualities with who they are as a human being. I think that duality is what’s most alluring about the characters and what also makes them so relatable. We always think about who they are and what their civilian identities are all about — their wants, their vulnerabilities, their flaws, and then we build these aspirational qualities that we all desire to have. What is that message of who Peter Parker is all about? What does Spiderman represent? You think of all those ideals, and that’s really how you start building a really interesting character. You lay it on top of a character that’s real, honest and authentic and that is really how we start to develop any character in the Marvel Universe.
What do you think works about your character Kamala Khan?
I think it’s a few different elements for why it works. We’ve been very lucky we’ve gotten a lot of support from the get go. I think Ms Marvel was created in a time when there weren’t many characters like her. After that we ended up celebrating a lot more of our diverse characters across the Marvel Universe and I think they’re also very successful. Ms Marvel is a little different because people got excited about her before they read any story about her. Aside from what she represents, it’s just a really great story. She’s a fantastic character. She’s very relatable. Funny, engaging, humorous, awkward. She’s so idealistic and she wants to do the best she possibly can. I’ve been very lucky to work with such incredible creators. I’ve had some great people behind the team who are cracking fantastic Ms Marvel stories. And that’s where the strength lies — we’re consistent in our care of Kamala and her future stories. Fundamentally, you just have to make sure you’re telling a good story.
You’ve advocated very strongly about women, in particular women of colour in comics. Where does that come from? Because I’m a brown woman [laughs]. I wanted to work in the comics industry. I felt very much like an outsider and somehow I felt like an outsider my entire life. And I think it was a bit frustrating for me initially to feel like an outsider in an industry that celebrated misfits and outsiders. It was a confrontation. I knew that more people were like me out there who may not have felt comfortable within the world of Marvel — who may not have felt comfortable within the comics industry at large and I wanted to make sure that we engage them. We’ve done a lot of work with women of Marvel; we’ve done a lot of work to bring them content and characters that are related to women and minorities in particular.
You’ve already co-created a female Muslim superhero. Which group of people would benefit most if Marvel created a story about them?
Right now? Man everybody! [laughs] I think it would be interesting to tell a story about an individual with disabilities that aren’t actually taken away with their superpowers. What would that story look like? I think the trans experience is one we haven’t really tapped into. I mean, I don’t know, I’m just gonna keep listing characters and experiences that we haven’t really told yet, but I don’t want to go down the cultural checkbox. We still have a lot of work to do and I think we have to make sure that we’re partnering with the right people to be able to do that. I will say we do have a lot of fantastic characters already in the treasure chest that people might not be aware of that we can find ways to elevate and tell more stories about. I think that’s a great place to start. If not, then figuring out what other characters we can build. But I think it does start with making sure we have the right voices.
What’s your ultimate goal in working for Marvel?
I want to be able to get to a point where Marvel isn’t viewed as a boy brand. That it’s just viewed as a brand loved by fans of all backgrounds and genders; fans of great stories and great characters. However I can make that happen, I will make that happen.