When it comes to comic books, it’s pretty much guaranteed that the hero of the hour is going to be a white CIS man simply because that was just the way things worked when classic characters like Spiderman, Iron Man and Superman were all created. Sure, you have Black Panther and a few more in recent years spearhead by the emergence of Miles Morales as an alternate Spiderman, but for the most part it’s stayed pretty white.

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So it’s obviously a major shock to hear that DC are going to be debuting a new black Batman early next year in their ‘Future State: The Next Batman’ limited series in January. His story will then continue in February in the ‘Batman: Black & White’ anthology series. Crazy.

The new Batman will be a character called Tim Fox, the estranged son of Bruce Wayne’s business partner Lucien Fox (Morgan Freeman in the Christopher Nolan trilogy) and the series will be set in futuristic Gotham City where all superheroes have been outlawed and Batman has been killed. It’s part of a bigger event called ‘Future State’ which will show comic book fans the future of the DC Universe.

The series will be written by John Ridley – the screenwriter of ’12 Years A Slave’ with art by Nick Derington and Laura Braga. Here’s what Ridley had to say about the project:

It’s the first time that my kids have been excited about my work.

They appreciate the things that I do. They’re happy for me. They’re great supporters.

But they would much rather see Black Panther than 12 Years a Slave, let’s be honest.

So to be able to write the next Batman, for them to know that this next Batman is going to be Black, everybody else on the planet can hate it, have a problem with it, denigrate it, but I have my audience and they already love it.

That’s nice for him, but he probably isn’t wrong about a whole bunch of people being pissed off about the new Batman being black. Can almost see the people who have never even read a comic book in their life with their faceless Twitter profiles with a bunch of numbers in the name spouting off about it right now.

The fact is it’s not detracting from Bruce Wayne’s stint as Batman – he’ll always be the original and best Batman, no doubt about it – but it’s just continuing his story after he’s dead. The race of the character that takes up the mantle shouldn’t be important in these circumstances and it’s great that DC are doing something progressive in deciding that it should be a black man. Top work.

For more of the same, check out ‘The Batman’ director revealing the first shots from the new movie. Bruce Wayne is still in that one.