John Romita Jr. has taken it upon himself to call out Marvel for replacing their iconic characters. It’s something that many agree with, and that includes Captain Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson.

While Marvel’s biggest competitor, DC, happens to be adding new characters with their Dark Matter Initiative – Marvel is simply changing theirs. And it doesn’t make sense. After all, DC is still keeping Bruce Wayne as Batman and Clark Kent as Superman. Why would Marvel think getting rid of their fan-favorite, iconic heroes is a good idea?

Newsarama happened to report that John Romita Jr. is quite “hot” with the notion that DC will be adding new characters to their lore.

Romita had this to say:

“There’s a cynical side to this, to your point. Why are you creating these characters just to add more diversity when everyone knows you’re doing that? If somebody had taken the Punisher, and made him female instead of who he is now – Frank Castle is now Francine Castle – that would piss me off. We’ve got two choices – well, three, but we’re not doing any transgenders just yet. I just don’t think of this as diversity, I think of it as just a new character. I think it’s great to have a new character. I just don’t look at is a diversity thing, because there have been great female characters and great characters of color through the decades. One of the reasons it doesn’t work is when you take a character that everyone’s known for a long time, and because we want to create that diversity, you say ‘I’m just gonna change this.’ That’s force-fitting, it’s retrofitting, and it never works comfortably. The idea is to create new characters…to be judged on their own merit.”

He also had this to say on Marvel EIC Axel Alonso’s comments about artists not mattering and not being able to sell books:

“Marvel doesn’t hire high-priced artists anymore. They hire high-priced writers instead, and they figure they can just fill in the artist later. And I take exception to that. We have written these books. We have helped create the story. We manifested the idea,” he continued, explaining that he believes it’s the partnership of artists and writers that makes for great comics.

Source: Newsarama

What do you think, is Marvel not respecting their fans and properties as they should? Let us know in the comments section below!