Ever since Clark Kent first donned a pair of oversized glasses and, somewhat improbably, hid his Superman persona from Lois Lane, questions of identity have been a staple of the comic-book genre. And it is near-gospel that a hero's alter ego is the polar opposite of his or her costumed personality. Beneath the mask, Spider-Man is Peter Parker, a nerdy, pimply-faced teenager. The Incredible Hulk metamorphoses from wilting scientist Bruce Banner into a raging green behemoth. By day, Daredevil is Matt Murdock, a blind, workaholic attorney. So perhaps it should not be surprising that Marvel Comics--creators of Spidey, The Hulk and Daredevil, among others--is taking the theme of identity in new, contemporary directions.

And yet it is surprising. In three new, seemingly unrelated comic-book series, Marvel has begun an exploration of racial, religious and sexual identity that is unique in the mainstream comic-book industry. In a new series titled Truth: Red, White & Black, writer Robert Morales and artist Kyle Baker offer a revisionist account of the origins of Captain America--the star-spangled hero who first fought the Nazis in World War II--in which the original hero is recast as a black GI. In Remembrance of Things Past, Fantastic Four No. 56 (Vol. 3), writer Karl Kesel and artist Stuart Immonen reveal that the orange, craggy hero known as "The Thing" is Jewish. And in Slap Leather, a series by writer Ron Zimmerman and artist John Severin, the Rawhide Kid, a gun-toting cowboy in the Old West, is openly gay. This reinvention of the identities of three major characters in a formerly homogenous corner of the literary (yes, literary) universe deserves a closer look.

Truth, Remembrance and Slap Leather have all caused a minor firestorm in comic-book land, with fans clogging Internet chatrooms, listservs and conventions with commentary, positive and negative, and the kind of excruciatingly detailed dissection of plot lines that keeps comic collectors up at night. (One Fantastic Four fan wrote in to say that The Thing can't be Jewish because in an issue from the 1970s the hero celebrated Christmas.)

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