Over the past month or so, fired X-Men '97 showrunner Beau DeMayo has doubled down on exposing some of the alleged injustices he faced while working at Marvel Studios. Now, he's posted (via ComicBookMovie.com) some pretty bold claims about the portrayal of Storm in the Disney+ series.
Much has been said about the character being whitewashed on screen; even Dark Phoenix star Alexandra Shipp has shared her hope for a darker-skinned actress to play Ororo Munroe on screen.
According to DeMayo, "The [X-Men '97] crew and I fought hard to have Storm’s skin tone darker and more accurate to her heritage versus [X-Men: The Animated Series]."
"Marvel noted that if we’re being so accurate about her skin color, then Storm shouldn’t have white hair either," he added. "These sort of micro-aggressive notes are designed to domino backwards to kill the initial idea, as Marvel knows we’re not changing Storm’s hair color."
DeMayo added, "Then came the usual racist 'Well if Storm’s too dark, we won’t be able to see her in nighttime or dark scenes.' We went ahead and did it anyway. Turns out there’s a thing in animation called 'lighting.'"
He'd later address one of X-Men '97's biggest controversies, the apparent whitewashing of Afro-Brazillian character Robert da Costa, a.k.a. Sunspot. DeMayo was heavily criticised for that before the show's release and even left social media for a time due to the backlash.
Now, though, he says, "Finally can address this! Marvel insisted he be Latino. I did push to darken his skin to reflect his Afro-Brazilian heritage but was given a flat-out 'No.'"
DeMayo has said he's doing an AMA later this week and also started taking interviews with some YouTube channels, so we're sure he'll have more to save very soon.
All episodes of X-Men '97 are now streaming on Disney+.