Marvel Comics is all set to launch brand new superheroes who’ll be promoting diversity. The comics behemoth is finally introducing its first non-binary character, Snowflake and Safespace, as part of the New Warriors reboot.
While the announcement has been received with mixed reviews and feedback, Daniel Kibblesmith and Lucciano Vecchio are the ones responsible for the recently revealed characters. They are now taking them and mixing them with some old favourites.
Snowflake, as a term has been identified as a derogatory remark for the past few years or calling someone out for being too sensitive. Making things worse, is Snowflake’s twin named Safespace, which has not been taken well by many as they aren’t ready to take back these words unless Kibblesmith presents them with a mindblowing story.
“Snowflake is non-binary and goes by they/them. Snowflake has the power to generate individual crystallised snowflake-shaped shurikens. The connotations of the word ‘snowflake’ in our culture right now are something fragile. And this is a character who is turning it into something sharp. Snowflake is the person who has more offensive power and Safespace is the person who has more defensive power. The idea is that they would mirror each other and complement each other. Together, the two characters are known as The Psychic Twins. “All twins are psychic, but we’re psychic-er”,” Kibblesmith said in a statement.
The original New Warriors debuted in the early 1990s, as a selection of rebel mutants somewhat junior to the more experienced Avengers. They came along at a time when Marvel was trying to retool a number of its characters for a younger audience used to edgier, more relevant storylines.
The series has already re-launched twice (once around the year 2000 and again in 2006), but this iteration will feature a team of ‘new’ New Warriors, mentored by the now-mature older generation of rebel mutants.
“I wanted to have teen characters who felt as ‘now’ as the New Warriors did in 1990. The New Warriors have been zeitgeist characters from the beginning, you get edgy skateboarding Night Thrasher in the ’90s and the Reality TV team in the 2000s, and now in 2020, we have New Warriors who have never grown up without the Internet, and one character who appears to essentially live inside it,” added Kibblesmith, on why he chose to make at least one of the characters openly non-binary.
