The latest story from the world of comics sees the latest version of Wonder Woman reimagined as a gay woman. Nothing particularly spectacular in its own right, you may think, but it follows hot on the heels of various other 'modernisations' of characters.

Wonder Woman is the latest long-standing character to recently be revealed as gay, following the original Green Lantern and the original X-Men's Iceman (not to mention Sulu in the latest Star Trek movie - a move which George Takei himself was not particularly enamoured with); Thor, Captain Marvel, Wolverine, Hawkeye and (soon) Iron Man are now female characters (although admittedly female versions of the characters, rather than a straight gender-change!) and Captain America and the Hulk have changed race, one being the dark-skinned former Falcon Sam Wilson, and the new Hulk being a young Asian guy, there are multiple Spider-Men of various races (and sexes!) and Conan The Barbarian is a scrawny weakling (much like myself!)...

It's all very well modernising characters to appeal to new audiences, and I applaud the two companies for taking chances with some of their biggest characters; but when you see just how many changes there have been in a short time, I feel the question has to be asked...is this truly modernisation or is it simply political correctness gone mad? Sometimes it feels as if the traditional straight white superhero feels a thing of the past, there won't be many left soon...I'm all for modernisation myself, the industry has to change with the times to survive, but all the same it's not always easy seeing old favourites changed (seemingly at times) simply to tick a few PC boxes.

I suppose it's a similar argument to the Master/Missy in Doctor Who (and one which will no doubt come up again in the event of a female Doctor being cast)...of course it's nice to recognise and reflect a wider audience...but wouldn't it be better to create new strong characters in this vein rather than just lazily hijacking a character to be used to tick things off an imaginary list? Personally I just think it all smacks of lazy writing and marketing, using an existing popular character and/or brand name in this way rather than haviing the guts and making the effort to create new characters from scratch which takes a lot of work.

Thoughts, everyone?