LordOfLore
Banned
Link.
It's a good read.
Fox's upcoming New Mutants has found its Roberto Da Costa (Sunspot) in 23-year-old actor Henry Zaga of Teen Wolf and 13 Reasons Why fame. For some fans, the news was another positive step towards the New Mutants finally making their cinematic debut. For others, though, word of Zaga's casting was bittersweet.
While both Roberto Da Costa and Zaga are Brazilian, Sunspot has been canonically depicted as Afrolatino, which Zaga does not appear to be. When Sunspot was originally introduced in the first issue of The New Mutants back in 1984, it was explained that Roberto, who is from Brazil, was biracial and born to a white American mother and a black Brazilian father. In one particular flashback to his life before he came to live at the Xavier Institute, Roberto recalls experiencing anti-black racism during a soccer game back home, specifically because of his mixed heritage.
In a fit of anger at Roberto's skill on the field, a pair of white players fouls him and when Roberto retaliates, the entire team gangs up on him, throws him to the ground, and beats him.
”Your father's wealth can't change the color of your skin," one player taunts. ”You're still black—an animal masquerading as a human being!"
As far as origin stories go, Roberto's is one that most explicitly uses mutant-ness as a direct metaphor for racism, which meshed perfectly with the New Mutants' goal of trying to replicate the successes of the X-Men formula with a younger, more ethnically diverse roster.
In the earliest days of his being a member of the New Mutants, Roberto was consistently drawn with the sort of features often associated with Afrolatino Brazilians, in particular, darker skin and curly hair. Over the years, however, as Roberto's gone on star in other Marvel comics, his looks have gradually changed in a way that reads to some as if the company is erasing his blackness.
It's a good read.
