Priest thinks Marvel's all-new, all-black Captain America is just a stunt.

In an interview with the LA Times this week, former Marvel writer and editor Christopher Priest had some strong words of advice for his former employer: "hire some actual black people." Priest's comments were part of a larger article about Sam Wilson's new role as Captain America, and Priest is taking a cynical view on what he calls a "stunt."

“It feels like a stunt,” he told Hero Complex in an email interview. “It would have felt like a stunt had I done it.” He added that Wilson, as he understands him, wouldn’t become Captain America – and that for the story to work it needs to feel different from Rhodes’ stints as Iron Man. “Putting the black sidekick in the suit, when everyone knows sooner or later you’re going to switch things back to normal, comes off as patently offensive,” Priest said.

Priest said he would be glad to be proven wrong:

“Marvel’s challenge is to deliver something so affirming and positive that the work overcomes that cynicism. I assure you, Black America will be watching: Does this have real depth, or is it just surfacey costume-switching?” And he had some other advice for Marvel: “Hire some actual black people.”

CBR asked Marvel Executive Vice President of Vanilla Pudding Tom Brevoort about Priest's comments in its weekly Marvel shill article, aptly titled Axel in Charge (Axel was busy this week, so Tom was in charge instead):

He gave that quote without ever having read any of the material. To me, that's not necessarily a fair judgment, That's an off-handed judgment. That's like the people right now who are very upset because of what they're hearing about how Doctor Doom is portrayed in the "Fantastic Four" movie. It's legitimate to hear about something and form an initial opinion of it, but you can't form a genuine, informed opinion until you've read the material.

There you have it. Brevoort supports blogger Doom in the abominable new Fantastic Four movie. He also admits what we all already know:

In terms of it being a temporary thing and not being a stunt, everything we do is storytelling. Everything we do, on a certain level, is a stunt.

And he offers a defense:

Is it likely that at some point Steve Rogers will be Captain America again? The tide of history tells us that's probably the case, but that didn't make it any less of a stunt when Bucky was Captain America. And the people that loved Bucky in that role weren't any less served because of the fact that, at some point, the day might come when the original guy would pick the shield up again. To me, it's not about having that office forever, it's about what you do when you're the guy.

Of course, the only reason fans are so uppity these days is because we actually know what's going on:

I understand the cynicism, and I think it's very easy -- particularly these days -- to be cynical about any announcement about any story in any comic, because to some degree we've let the audience in behind the curtain so much. It's a more transparent era. Our readers have a lot more of an idea of how the sausage is actually made than they did in the days when it was Stan and the Bullpen Bulletins, and what you really got was Stan's very sanitized, very rah-rah versions of what working in comics was like at that period.

Ah, the good ol' days. Read the full LA Times piece here. Read Brevoort's full interview here.

What do you think? Is the new Captain America a stunt, or progressive storytelling? Can it be both?