Comic book legend Stan Lee is optimistic about the upcoming Spider-Man reboot.
“I think it’s great,” the Spider-Man creator told E! of the casting of 19-year-old Tom Holland to play the titular web-slinger. “They are doing so much with Spider-Man. You just wait and see all the surprises we have in store for you.”
One surprise fans won’t get to see? A gay Spider-Man.
Earlier this month, a leaked document from last year’s Sony hack revealed that Marvel, the studio behind the Spider-Man reboot, drafted strict “mandatory traits” for the character; namely, he must remain white and straight. He also cannot torture or kill unless in self defense, cannot smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol and cannot have underage sex.
Lee told E! that he is onboard with the Marvel memo.
“The only thing I don’t like doing is changing the characters we already have,” Lee said. “For example, I’d like Spider-Man to stay where he is, but I have no problem creating a superhero who’s homosexual. I have no problem with having a black one, a Latino one, a Chinese one, anything – the whole world is our playground. The whole world has heroes we can draw from.”
Of course, a gay Spider-Man wouldn’t be out of place in the wake of recent developments in the comic book industry; in April, “All New X-Men” writer Brian Michael Bendis announced that legendary X-Men character Bobby Drake, aka Iceman, would come out as gay in a future issue. Earlier this year, Marvel announced that Thor, the masculine Norse superhero, would become a woman.
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