Orlando Taylor of nascent graphic novel publisher Kuumba Concepts saw our story on the upcoming Black Panther-Storm wedding storyline from Marvel (see 'Black Panther/Storm Nuptials Detailed'), and feels that Marvel's efforts are past due:

I just finished reading this story and shared it with some friends of mine, who are also into animation and comics, and we all laughed at Marvel (and the comic industry as well) as it scrambles to garner a part of the market it has ignored for decades.

The X-Men are roughly four decades old and when Stan Lee started the idea he has been quoted that he based it on the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s; that the character Charles Xavier was supposedly loosely based on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Magneto was his answer to Malcolm X.  So it is interesting that over all these years they only had two black characters of any substance: Storm and Bishop.  Now that the comic industry is suffering due to the aging of the white male market that it really marketed/advertised to, there is a concerted effort by Marvel and other publishers to woo black dollars. 

Despite the fact I am a writer who is creating characters that are black and have more depth to them than say Cage (who is an ex-con), and who wants to have my own comic/graphic novel production/publishing company I have no real sympathy for the industry here.

Young black youth (of which I was one) for decades have been searching for characters they can identify with and that are as awesome as the many white characters that have been thrown at us.  But they never really came in the numbers we were hoping for.  So, now the industry needs black people and the young readers aged 8-15 that they forgot years ago.