Aquaman, Black Panther, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse all came out in the same year. Let’s all celebrate the rise of the POC-lead superhero film!

If you’ve read any of my articles here, you can probably guess that my two favorite genres of film are comic book movies and romantic comedies.

This might be a strange combination, but in reality, these two genres share a lot of similarities.

They both require you to suspend your belief, at least a little bit, in order for them to work. They’re both a little bit whimsical, a little bit fanciful, and a whole lot of spectacle. They both have beloved characters who stay with us long after the final credits have rolled.

And they’re both — up until recently at least — very, very white.

Since 2000, Batman, Magneto, and Professor X have all been played by two different actors; The Hulk has had two different solo films and three different actors playing him; we’ve had three wildly different Hugh Jackman Wolverine movies; and three whole Spider-Man franchises, each lead by a different actor.

It’s been 10 years and 20 movies since the start of the MCU with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, and five years and six films since the birth of the DCEU with Henry Cavill in Man of Steel.

We’ve had heroes who are scientists and heroes who were soldiers; heroes who are wealthy philanthropists and heroes who were poor criminals. We’ve basically had every single hero from every single walk of life imaginable.

We just didn’t have very many who weren’t white.

True, from 1998 to 2004, we got the three Blade films (which are criminally underrated), and 2004 gave us Catwoman (which is better off forgotten, quite honestly). But other than these films — both of which preceded the start of the current superhero movie craze — every single one of the leads of these many, many superhero films have been white.

Of course, this isn’t to say that we didn’t have people of color in superhero films. Of this we’ve had plenty — plenty of sidekicks and best friends and guys in the chair.

If we were lucky, people of color got to be love interests. If we were really lucky, villains — who at least get as much focus and screentime as heroes.

A decade of superhero stories showed that people of color could be heroic, but were never going to be the hero.

And then 2018 rolled around.

February 2018 gave us Black Panther, the MCU’s very first movie lead by a Black superhero and with a primarily Black cast.

After 10 years and 20 movies, Black Panther made a triumphant debut.

It went on to become the MCU’s highest grossing film domestically, the number one grossing superhero origin story ever, and the highest rated MCU film of all time.

And in doing so, turned years of what was accepted, conventional wisdom about what heroes should look like and who audiences would choose to watch on the big screen completely on its head.

We saw Black characters who were kings and queens and princesses, who were strong and vulnerable and smart, who were spies, inventors, soldiers, and generals.

We cheered as we saw T’Challa, an African king of the most advanced and prosperous nation in the world, rise to power and understand what it meant to be both a great leader and a good man.

Black Panther was both a fantastic movie and an enduring cultural event with the power not only to change the way old-fashioned movie producers and studios see movies, but the way entire communities see themselves — both as individuals and how they are represented on the big screen.

But the ride wasn’t over yet.

In the last cold days of December, we saw another king — this time, a biracial man who proudly displayed Polynesian tattoos across his body and wore a Maori pounamu toki necklace around his neck for the entire movie. He commanded the powerful kingdom of Atlantis — or, at least, was meant to.

Throughout the film, Jason Momoa infused the true king of the seven seas with traditions and practices that drew from his own native Hawaiian and Polynesian heritage.

From his greeting of his father, to the words that he spoke before an attack, to even his fight stances, Arthur Curry — a traditionally white, blond, blue-eyed hero in the comics — was a character fully shaped by his culture.

We watched in awe as Arthur Curry visited Atlantis, and saw him journey throughout the movie and come out at the other end with the realization that he could live his life at peace with both parts of him — Atlantean and human.

A journey of acceptance that — as fantastical a movie as Aquaman is — is grounded in the very real experiences of star Jason Momoa, and in many ways, biracial children just like him.

Finally, 2018 also gave us Miles Morales and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While without the fanfare of Black Panther and Aquaman, Into the Spider-Verse absolutely stands toe-to-toe with both of these films in terms of story, spectacle, and importance.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse centers on Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino Spiderman who takes over spider-duties after the Peter Parker of his universe is killed.

Into the Spider-Verse is more of a true origin story than either Black Panther or Aquaman, and while it’s equally as dedicated to its comic book origins and has some truly dizzying and fantastic set pieces and scenes, it’s also a more intimate story than either of these films.

If Black Panther was about a son who became king, and Aquaman told a story of a king who became a hero, then Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse showed that a hero could be anyone.

Even — and perhaps especially — those who haven’t looked like the conventional heroes we’ve seen on the screen.

And while bloggers and critics and movie-goers alike are often so keen to line up superheroes and compare them to one another, I’d like to stay away from that in this article.

Because after nearly two decades of comic book films in this modern era — with seven released in this alone — we finally have three fantastic superhero films led by men of color which all offer three distinct experiences.

In one year, we’ve gotten to see a regal African king rise to the throne of the most technologically advanced country in the world, a rough and tumble mixed-raced Polynesian Aquaman accept his role as the king of the powerful underwater nation of Atlantis, and an Afro-Latino teen from Brooklyn become your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man while saving the world from a hole in the time-space continuum.

It’s been a great year for superheroes of color.

Rather than tearing any of them down on the altar of “but which one was better!?”, we should instead celebrate all of these heroes, their experiences and the experiences of those who have gotten to see themselves on the screen as heroes.

And keep pushing onwards and upwards for even greater and more inclusive representation in 2019.