Disability in Marvel and DC, Part 1: Disabled Characters Are Interesting.

This is the first in a five part exploration of what cripping-up looks like to audiences and fans of the DC and Marvel universes, and how a combination of brand values and good story telling could provide a solution.

In the comics Hawkeye was deaf. Initially this was erased from the screen adaptations, arguably removing his most interesting characteristic.

Between the DC Universe and Marvel Universe there are over 100,000 characters, and when I started writing this article I asked myself if, starting with the cinematic universes, I could find 100 disabled characters, which turned out to be a lot easier then I thought.
To start with I think it is important I qualify what I mean by “disabled”. Because I am focusing on the characters and how they are portrayed, so I am referring to disability characteristics or signifiers that are obvious to the audience, whom would recognise the disability without it having its presence spelled out to them.
For a breakdown of the kind of characteristics that would signify that a character is disabled, this guide on identifying disability on-screen covers the more obvious ones.

When I was conducting my initial research I noticed not only how much disability is portrayed in the comics, but also how the writers often use the disability as a metaphor for a sense otherness and explore the physical, psychological and societal barriers the characters face. At the same time it struck me not only how disability is downplayed when the characters are transferred from the page to the screen, but also how very few disabled actors are given the opportunity of portraying those disabled characters.

Bolivar Trask, played by Peter Dinklage, introduced short stature to the character.

Casting a non-disabled actor in a disabled role is becoming increasingly recognised as unethical, and this practice is known as “Cripping-up”. Although its definition has some rather fuzzy edges about what is and isn’t appropriate, the basic issue is that disabled actors are very rarely considered for roles where a character’s conditions are obvious to the audience, even though thy have the best understanding of what it is to be a disabled person. This is very similar to the types of prejudices black and minority ethic actors faced in the past, and the creative output can at times be similarly uncomfortable to watch. But there are differences and storytelling is complex.

Daredevil is an interesting example as he is blind, but also has other non-human senses that compensate and are comparative to sight. Arguably he could be cast authentically with a disabled or non-disabled actor.

To start with it is an interesting exercise to be aware of disability in a storyline, so when referring to when a character is scripted as disabled. This could include:

· the character has a condition which socially isolates them or leads to prejudice because of their different appearance, behaviour or ability,

· their mobility or movement is significantly different and impaired, so they may need walking aids, a wheelchair, experience pain when moving,

· they might have missing limbs, or even a missing body,

· they might experience barriers in the physical world because they cannot perceive their surrounding or physically access spaces in a standard way,

· they might have to communicate differently because of a condition or impairment,

· they might have technologies that compensate or overcompensate for their impairment or condition, helping them move, see, hear, fight or simply stay alive.

Karma making adjustments to the cybernetic prosthetic leg, created for her by Madison Jeffries

Marvel and DC are interesting, not just because of their popularity but they are a microcosm of characters where disabilities are amplified through origin stories or arcs, so they are really easy to spot. They also provide barriers for characters to overcome, because barriers are interesting.

In both cases, especially Marvel, one of the underlying themes is prejudice because of otherness. X-Men is founded on this and otherness has been used to explore ideas of racism, homophobia, transphobia and all because they are in Stan Lee’s words, “mutants”. Many of them are born with disabling physicalities or senses, or they suffer isolation because of the way they look or because of some unintentional harm they present to themselves or others, much in the way people with autoimmune conditions have.
This rich vein of disability storytelling goes all the way back to DC’s Doctor Mid-Nite in 1941, and both universes are brave, kind and realistic, if not a little exaggerated in their telling of the lived experience of disability.

The first cover of DC’s Dr. Mid-Night comic book series from 1943. He was the first disabled superhero.

What do the respective Brand Values say about Disability?

When I began on my journey with this article I wondered if that unwritten culture of storytelling and portrayal in the comics aligned with the more modern cultural statements of their respective organisations.

Disney own the Marvel brands and Warner Brothers own DC, so when I looked at these organisations’ values, it was interesting to see how well they align with a disability inclusion ethos:

In Disney’s World of Belonging, it states,

“Across our platforms, we champion storytelling that reflects the world around us and helps us develop meaningful relationships with our fans and customers. We strive to present genuine, authentic, and respectful storytelling. To do so, we engage individuals, families, and communities across the globe, and we embrace different perspectives in our filmmaking, both in front of and behind the camera.”

In The Warner Brothers, Discovery principles, says it will,

“Empower others, have courage, and pursue equity. Amplify the voices of global storytellers to reflect audiences around the world. Intentionally seek out diversity, remove barriers, and create space for all to share ideas and be heard. Actively listen and lead with empathy, integrity, and transparency.”

Having such open and inclusive values based on storytelling is always a good start, as this sets a cultural and ethical tone for others to follow.

I applied these brand values to casting decisions, and there is a stark gap between values and practices. I immediately started identifying cripping-up in the cinematic universes counting a total of 66 disabled characters, and only 8 disabled actors cast out of 110 associated casting decisions (not including returns in multiple movies or shows.)

Misty Knight is a former NYPD police officer whose arm was amputated following a bomb attack. After receiving a bionic prosthetic from Tony Stark, she started a private-investigation agency.

To date cripping-up has been the choice made 93.3% of the time in the combined universes, although there are some recent examples that buck that trend.

This shows that for both organisations, historically there has been a creative disconnect between the franchises’ and organisational values in one hand, and the creative decisions being made in casting processes and the writer’s rooms in the other.

“Culture is what happens when the senior management is not in the room.”

I’m unsure where this statement originates from but it seems to be appropriate here as this is either the organisations or the creatives not buying into their own values, or the writers and directors with not appreciating the foundations of storytelling in the franchises they are working on.
The characters that are written as disabled, or where disability is a core part of the character, make up less is less than 0.5% of all roles in the cinematic universes, and over 90% of those roles are cast with non-disabled actors. I will include a more detailed list in Part 2.

Deathstroke AKA Slade Wilson only has one eye and his barrier is a lack of stereoscopic vision, that means he cannot judge distances.

This is probably why the comics themselves seem to align better with Disney’s and Warner Brother’s values than the cinematic universes do. The comics were founded on interesting creative ideas where personal and societal barriers make interesting stories and add subtext. It is possible that if the people who interpret a story don’t understand or deeply relate to the subject, they change it, dumb it down, and something fundamental is gets lost, which may go some way to explain how disability is toned down or at times erased from characters on screen.

Death Locket AKA Rebecca Ryker. After being maimed in an explosion that killed her mother and brother, Rebecca was rebuilt using the Deathlok technology that her father developed.

An Approach Could Really Be This Simple.

If both Disney and Warner genuinely believe in their own cultural brand rhetoric, then this is not a hard problem to fix. In fact they have already explored approaches that have worked for a handful of their characters:

1. Just don’t do it. Stick to what makes the characters interesting, which are usually the obstacles they overcome. Removing their condition also removes the barriers they face, which makes them a bit boring. See Hawkeye.
2. Recast a role because, with very few exceptions, the character is usually the bigger brand. Even Spider-man gets regularly recast. Then leverage the publicity angle of bringing in new talent who also has overcome barriers to even be there. Every disabled actor comes with their own story, and every publicist should capitalise on that. See Kingpin and Barbara Gordon as examples of where authentic casting has worked.
3. Be interesting and truthful with every new character you introduce. There are still a lot of disabled characters yet to appear like Bishop, Hornet, Destiny, Forge, Blindfold, Proxy, Clayface and more I’ll explore in part 3, so be authentic and interesting.
4. In a Multiverse anything is possible, so be open to exploring the possibility. This means that for every character there are infinite disabled versions of themselves, like Sun-Spider Spider-man.

“Creativity is about interesting choices and disability is always an interesting choice.” Zak ford-Williams.

For some more detailed guidance to these approaches, see Best Practice Guidance for Disability Portrayal and Casting.

Sun-Spider AKA Charlotte Webber. She has Ehlers Danlos syndrome which affects her joints and connective tissue. Because of this, Charlotte uses a wheelchair and crutches for extra stability. As Sun-Spider, her crutches are equipped with web-shooters. This is the first example where the idea that any character can be disabled because of the infinite possibilities presented by the multiverse.

Where Is The Disability Portrayal in the DC and Cinematic Universes?

Just to get the worst out of the way, I open up with an example which is one of the most unpleasant and offensive portrayals of on-screen ableism and disability bigotry there has been, so please feel free to skip past this section or use the links above to go straight to the solutions for Disability Casting in a Multiverse.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Mention Handi-Boy.

In the early 1990’s the creators of the popular sketch show In Living Color proclaimed that there were “no disabled superheroes”, and so used this to produce The Adventures of Handi-Boy. A series of sketches about a super hero with cerebral palsy which they excused with the rationale that disabled people need a super hero to relate to.
They completely missed that fact that by 1990 Marvel and DC already had at least 44 physically disabled heroes and super villains including iconic characters like Daredevil, Dr Strange, Professor X, Cyborg, Deathlock, Lizard, Oracle, Jubilee, Dr Mid-Nite, Chief, Jerico, The Penguin and Mr Freeze. This glaringly obvious point makes you wonder what the real intentions were behind the sketches.

Don’t watch this if you can help it as it is simply awful, and no-one involved has ever offered so much of a word of an apology. Was this a way of creating a “missing” disabled superhero identity? It is important to point out that this programme had nothing to do with Marvel, DC Comics, Disney or Warner Brothers.

Maybe the writers and performers of Living Color didn’t read comics?
Or maybe subconsciously they couldn’t accept that superheroes or villains could be disabled, or that disabled people have any worth?
Who knows, but the problem is that getting passed the obvious bullying for laughs intention behind this, cripping-up still carries some of this intent in that non-disabled people are making the decision that disabled actors are incapable of portraying something they know more about than non-disabled actors.

Logan AKA Wolverine pushes Charles Xavier down the stairs after learning from the Weapon X program that Xavier orchestrated the events that led to Wolverine’s trauma. This act is driven by Wolverine’s intense anger and desire for vengeance

Thankfully ignoring the existence of disability is not something Stan Lee or his contemporaries ever signed-up to. He believed that a character’s backstory and the barriers they faced, psychologically, emotionally and physically, brought them to life. This made them relatable and interesting. Which is probably why he created over a dozen characters with disabilities himself, and he was not afraid to portray the bigotry they suffered.
The writers never sugar coated disability, or the attitudes towards disability, sometimes making the audience uncomfortable is a great way of exploring a subject.

Spider-Man is referring to Sin-Eater, whom he is setting out to beat to death. Whether Sin-Eater would be classed as “disabled” from characteristics standpoint could be creatively explored.

Disability and Otherness are Interesting and Relatable

Stan Lee believed that characters should have interesting backstories, and as disability always has an interesting story attached he used this and other themes not to be worthy or woke, because wokeness wan’t even a word back then. He did that because he had both incredible imagination and empathy, and as such knew that difference was interesting.

Stan Lee, the creator of over a dozen disabled characters in the Marvel Universe

The creation of characters who have experiences of stigma and exclusion presents a creative opportunity that some Directors have spotted. Each time a disabled actor is cast authentically there is a lot of interest because when the show is over, their story continues. We are all interested in the personal stories behind stories, and a great example is when Vincent D’Onofrio was cast as Wilson Fisk AKA Kingpin. Both the character and the actor are autistic and the press and the audience found this interesting, and his performances have been very well received.

Kingpin AKA Wilson Fisk is played by Vincent D’Onofrio. Both the character and the actor are autistic.

Origins, Metaphors and Journeys

Starting with the obvious place, the origin story of a character. Many of the characters in the following list have included some type of condition or impairment, which has meant they have faced barriers to overcome. This has sparked determination and change leading them down interesting paths to the heroes or villains we know and love. Alternatively they have acquired a disability because of the situations that they have found themselves in, or from illness and as such they may have incredible cybernetic prosthetics or other overcompensating assistive technologies that enable them to battle either good or evil.
All of this gives them what is often referred to as “lived disability experience”, where they have a sense of otherness, they experience stigma, isolation and exclusion, which are things that so many disabled people face in society every day of their lives. This can mean that looking for characters where their condition creates an environment where they have to isolate or will not be accepted is a direct reference to all sorts of people on the margins of society, especially disabled people who do not have the option or ability to mask their condition.

Victor Fries (pronounced “freeze”) as a scientist in Gotham City who suffers a lab accident while trying to cryogenically preserve his terminally ill wife, Nora. He is kept alive by his cybernetic life support armoured suit that also increases his strength and durability to superhuman levels.

An Approach to Authentic Disability Casting and Portrayal

Imagine that a production is at the beginning of either it’s writing or casting processes. These are the two points where the studios values can be put into practise:

· As with anything that is an adaptation, start with the disability characteristics and signifiers in the original text. Look at these characteristics and apply them to every potential character while the story is still in development, and just to make sure check if any character has previously been identified

· Don’t remove their disability as you are likely going to make the character a lot less interesting. Disability as “otherness” in a story has won many Academy Awards as people are always interested in difference.

· Research the barriers the characters have faced because of the way they look, what other people’s expectations are of them, or how they have struggled both with other people’s prejudices and with their own self-worth. Research what it is to be a person who was born blind, or is a wheelchair user, and learn about the physical and social barriers they face, as overcoming barriers is interesting as part of an origin story in shaping their character, and adds challenges and jeopardy in their journey. A disabled actor will more often understand this better than a non-disabled actor, so consider hiring a Disability Consultant for the writers’ room.

· If this is a character that has appeared before, is there an opportunity to re-cast? Some actors are too associated with the characters, but the majority are not. Spider-man, Batman, The Penguin, Cyborg, Joker and more have been re-cast multiple times, so if a disability happens to a character then maybe it’s time to consider putting authentic casting back on the table.

· Think about the details of the character and don’t be too specific with the conditions as this can limit casting choices. Sometimes finding a great disabled actor with a mismatch of conditions is not a bad thing, see Barbara Gordon. Portrayal and Casting Guidance has ways to make this work but it can mean changes to script, so make sure a conversation is had at an early stage.

Barbara Gordon AKA Oracle is a wheelchair user. Savannah Welch was cast in Titans (2021). Welch is an amputee in real life so even though she is not a wheelchair user her lived experience as a disabled person enabled her to inhabit the character.

What does this show us about Disability Representation in the rest of Hollywood?

Is change happening? Considering the first disabled actor, Esmond Knight, was cast in a leading role in the movie The Silver Fleet as long ago as 1943, and we are still seeing cripping-up in franchises like KB in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (2024).

In between these we have hundreds of instances of actors cripping-up across TV and Movies, despite the bad publicity it can bring, and the obvious disconnect it has with the respective studio’s values.
There is no reluctance to tell disabled stories, because they are interesting, but there is a reluctance within the industry to embrace the idea that disabled actors could be best placed to tell them, especially when disability is apparent and obvious to the audience.
The phrase “breakthrough moments,” is still used to justify tokenism in casting, where a couple of disabled actors may be given minor roles, but the reality is that actual engagement with disability as a creative opportunity still seems to be beyond the creative imagination of most productions, especially in the US. In doing so, ableism is presented as acceptable to the general audience. This is despite the fact that audiences show us they are never bored with stories about disabled people, superheroes or villains.

The Academy still technically allows cripping-up as representation, but at the same time disability has made it someway into their criteria, but it is not given an even footing when it comes to casting practice. Until changes are made and organisations put in practice their own commitments to diversity, then cripping-up will still happen, and as disabilities are such a core aspect of the DC and Marvel characters, then the instances of cripping-up in these cinematic universes are likely to continue for some time.

Omnimutant is a Frankenstein’s Monster made from X-Men, parts that include Deadpool, Wolverine, Beast, Colossus, Cable, also Black Tom Cassidy, all with vastly different physicalities and abilities. Such a creature could only function with difficulty and pain.

Change is Always Down Organisational Self-Belief

This is the same conclusion for all inclusion. If an organisation says that disability inclusion matters, then proof is down to whether or not it puts those words into practice.
There is free guidance available, lots of trained and experienced professional actors, tried and tested guidance for on-set accessibility so no-one has to figure this out, free online training materials for productions, audiences repeatedly show us they are interested, and there are creative opportunities to find new dimensions in telling stories and portraying characters we love.

For more information and guidance, and lots of helpful resources read Best Practice Guidance for Disability Portrayal and Creative Casting in TV Dramas and Movies

IMDB Resources:

Actors who are either D/deaf, have a Visible Disability or Short Stature
Actors Who Have Cripped-up Since 2010 (lots of DC and Marvel examples)
Cripping-up in Films and TV Dramas
Disability Portrayal. The Fails and the Wins
Oscar Nominations for Non-Disabled Actors Playing Disabled Characters
TV Dramas and Movies that Cast Visibly Disabled Actors

Wikipedia Resources:

What is Cripping-Up? Includes examples from the DC and Marvel Cinematic Universes
List of Professional Actors with Disabilities
List of Marvel, DC and Manga Characters with Disabilities

DC Universe Database Visible Disability:

Characters with Missing Limbs
Cyborgs, some of which have disabilities
Characters with No Eyes
Characters with One Eye

Marvel Universe Database Visible Disability:

Paralyzed Characters
Characters with No Legs
Characters with One Leg
Characters Missing a Hand
Characters Missing an Arm
Characters with One Eye
Deaf Characters
Disembodied Brains
Conjoined Twins
Characters with No Hands
Characters with No Feet
Characters with No Eyes
Blind Characters
Characters with No Arms
Characters of Short Stature