rayvone-deactivated20200430
asked:
With over 70 years Its clear that marvel has one of the biggest character pools in the industry, why do you think creators continue to make new characters for their series? Specifically I mean why add a new white male character to a book when you could've just used one (with the same power set and everything) that hasn't gotten any major attention since the 70 - 90's? it's like having access to the worlds biggest toy box but staying your phone instead.
Because a power set is only the slightest thing there is to a character. People create the characters they need in order to tell their stories. They may not be aware of earlier characters, or those characters may have aspects to them that don’t fit in with what the story is going to be. Plus, it can feel exclusionary for certain readers to bring back an obscure character from decades ago if you don’t need to. On top of which, you never know what new character is going to hit–certainly Spider-Gwen was a surprise that wouldn’t have happened if some other established spider-person such as Jessica Drew or Julia Carpenter had been used there.