Marvel's Snowflake and Safespace Heroes Manage to Anger Both SJWs and Anti-SJWs
Updated April 5 2020, 12:40 p.m. ET
Marvel's created some of the most iconic superhero characters the world has ever seen. Thousands of years from now, humans will probably look at Marvel comics and the collection of films as religious texts/media, probably. Tales of Iron Man and his weird motley crew of apostles will reverberate throughout the ages.
Tales of two new heroes, Snowflake and Safespace, more than likely, will not. Maybe as some kind of infamous joke.
That's right, the same business that brought you Spiderman, and Thor, and Hulk, and Captain America, and Wolverine, and the Juggernaut, and Magneto, and Deadpool, and the Punisher, and Thanos and countless other iconic, cool heroes and villains, thought it'd be awesome to introduce a new-new group of "warriors." And two of its team-members were named after SJW terms that have transformed to take on pejorative meanings.
The group of heroes look like they were taken straight off of Deviant Art, with names, powers, and backgrounds that still look like they're in the workshop phase. Rounding out their party are "Screentime" someone who can instantly Google any fact after his brain was connected to the internet (?), B-Negative, who's a vampire, and Trailblazer, who's got a backpack that is actually a portal to another dimension.
While a lot can be said about the collective lameness of this team as a whole, people are really, really not able to get over Snowflake and Safespace, namely because Marvel's trying to make a lot of statements in one by debuting these characters. Forgetting about their names for a second (it's difficult, I know), they're twins who both identify as non-binary. On top of that, they're engaged in an incestuous relationship.
Really.
So you can see where a lot of people are getting all up in arms about the names of these heroes. Marvel introduces two progressive characters, and then immediately gives them names that are used to insult and demean SJWs online — oh, and then decides it's cool that they're screwing one another. Not that Marvel hasn't been on the incestuous hero kick before, either, but it's just a heck of another attribute to roll up in these two.
The writer of the characters says that their names are very similar to Screentime; it's this idea that these are terms that get thrown around on the internet that they don't see as derogatory. [They] take those words and kind of wear them as badges of honor." Snowflake is a "cryokinetic" who can throw ice stars at enemies, while Safespace can create big pink force fields to protect others ... just not himself.
The two were generally met with a collective cringe from comic book fans who didn't quite get what Marvel was trying to accomplish with these two characters. Are they making fun of their names? Are they trying to make them cool? Do they not realize how strange this all is?
Writer Daniel Kibblesmith, who worked on the "New Warriors" is the kind of writer that one Twitter described as "maximum woke."
It turns out that yes, he did write a children's book about a gay black Santa Claus that ran a toy-making shop with unionized elves. So it could be that he created the characters without any irony whatsoever and thought it'd be cool to use the terms that are often used as part of ridicule and name some heroes after them.
Then came the Snowflake and Safespace redesigns.
Criticism of the characters didn't just stop in their monikers and the philosophies behind their conceptions, either. There were tons of fans who thought they could draw them a lot better, too.
But again, that's pretty much par the course whenever a design that isn't exceptionally eye-grabbing pops up on the internet; of course there are people who'll think that they can do better.
What do you think of the heroes? Are you stoked for a Snowflake and Safespace Marvel film in the near future?