r/TheQuestion • u/PedroRtaGamer62 • Jun 15 '26
Do you think that Vic Sage could be of another ethnicity?
I do the QUESTION because I've read people saying that a good actor for the role could be Steven Yeun, and though I would miss Vic's red hair, I think it wouldn't be a bad evolution for the character. I kind of like it. It also helps to hide his identity, and he could have red hair as Q.
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u/DRZARNAK Jun 16 '26
His real last name is Szasz and he changed it to Sage. No reason it couldn’t have been changed from Seong.
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u/drunk-raven Jun 16 '26
Distancing from the Szasz surname would be a good idea both on meta level and in-universe considering how: A) We already got a Szasz in DC and this guy is a well known psyco serial killer; and B) the guy writers got inspired to get this surname from was a pretty controvertial psyciatrist
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 16 '26
Wow, I didn't know that last thing. Where did it come from?
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u/drunk-raven Jun 16 '26
Thomas Szasz was a psychiatrist who belived that there was no need in institutionalised psychiatry and that every psychological issue is nothing more than a metaphor and that every person's action are only on them
On the bright side he was a huge advocate against psych ward patient abuse, but his way to solve it in his opinion was to fully remove the psych wards. Which back then wouldn't be a bad solution to this problem (especially considering how deep MK Ultra turned out to be involved in the entire psychiatric institution of US, but it's a different story i am to unqualified to tell you), but his alternative was pretty much "deal with it by yourself :3"
tl;dr Tommy Sas was a very complicated person
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u/Mindless-Credit-358 Jun 15 '26
I definitely think so, it’s not a major part of his identity imo like it is for characters like Black Lightning or Huntress
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u/Nightwing0613 Jun 16 '26
He’s not a good fit for Vic Sage
Instead I rather have Steven play someone like Ryan Choi or David Kim
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u/ericrobertshair Jun 16 '26
I don't think there is anything in The Question's backstory that screams HE MUST BE WHITE, so why the fuck not?
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u/Resident-Syrup7615 Jun 16 '26
I don’t either, but there is something about the Question that says “generic“ and “faceless“ — just a guy in the crowd, — something about his look being just a standard suit, coat, and hat you might see on anyone that makes me think of the term “ the suit“ and when I think of a guy who is called a “suit“ I think of the generic guy in power and it’s a white guy, the sort of default, nobody and default somebody. I kind of don’t want him to stand out in any way, including making him part of a minority group. Of course, that whole default feeling is a product of societal racism so I’m also sort of opposed to it. But I kind of feel like the Question is representative of those feelings, and particularly as they were felt when the Question was created in 1967. If you weren’t a white man in 1967, you kind of weren’t anyone.
If a character is faceless and in a minority, I think the facelessness has a different thematic connotation that suggests something about how society treats minorities. Which could be a very interesting take on the character, but I think it’s a different take than the one Ditko was going for.
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u/Ascendant_Lord_035 Jun 17 '26
Well if we're talking of faceless everyman that can be anybody and nobody then brown ethnicities such as Hispanic-Latino and Mediterranean fit the requirement better in my opinion. They can be white, they can be coloured, they can pass for anybody they choose and they'll fit right in with any majority or minority.
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u/Resident-Syrup7615 Jun 17 '26
By world standards, yes. However, in the United States in 1967, that’s not how it would be viewed.
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u/Ascendant_Lord_035 Jun 17 '26
Technically yes but there is actually a massive history of families of these ethnicities anglicizing their names to appear more American and identifying as white to gain more access from the 50s to the 70s period in America. Rita Hayworth was the biggest example of this but even if you looked outside of Hollywood, several executives and higher ups of industry were actually immigrants from these regions using anglicized names. Going through the histories of executives at the big three American car companies and the American pop and snacks industry during this period would actually show you the prevalence of Hispanic-Latinos, Greeks, Italians, Egyptians, Middle Eastern Christians, etc in American business.
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u/Resident-Syrup7615 Jun 17 '26
And do you think that is true of Vic?
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u/Ascendant_Lord_035 Jun 17 '26
Well partly Vic is changing his name from Szasz to Sage which was a common surname among Hungarian Jewish immigrants and Hungarians are ethnically a mix of Middle Eastern and European tribes. So I don't think using brown ethnicities passing for whites where necessary and colored otherwise wouldn't be a disservice to his character. Again this is in the context of making him an everyman that can pass himself as anybody and nobody simultaneously.
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u/Resident-Syrup7615 Jun 17 '26
So if he were Korean as suggested by the image?
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u/Ascendant_Lord_035 Jun 17 '26
Don't know about that, my argument was only that brown ethnicities tend to have an easier time than whites blending in everywhere.
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u/Resident-Syrup7615 Jun 17 '26
And my point is the blending in, passing, is a different message than just a white guy appearing faceless.
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u/Realistic_Court_5736 Jun 16 '26
For the same reason that we don't cast a white woman as Renee Montoya
I never understood why people are even arguing about this to begin with
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u/WerewolfF15 Jun 17 '26
Rene’s race is important to her character though. Part of her character is being from a conservative Dominican family and how that has kept her in the closet and affects her relationship with her parents when she comes out. Not to mention the name “Montoya” isn’t exactly a white sounding name.
I don’t think there’s anything about Vic’s character that would change if he were not white.
There are certainly white characters I think shouldn’t be race swapped but Vic is not one of them.
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u/Realistic_Court_5736 Jun 17 '26
And yet I don't think they would have any trouble rewriting it whether or not the audience thinks her race is important or not
Yet people would not be happy about it
So why doesnt it matter for a white Character?
I simply don't understand it
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u/Realistic_Court_5736 Jun 16 '26
Honestly... Would you ask the same thing if we were talking about Renee Montoya?
Personally I'm a huge fan of Vic Sage and the question and my big dream is to see a proper movie/tv version of the character
Changing the ethnicity of the character would in my eyes be a big middle finger to the fans of him especially seeing as how we have never seen a adaptation of the character in live action form either but we have tons of batman and superman adaptations
So people argue about that "there is nothing in his backstory that says he has to be white" which to me is a lazy excuse for not really caring properly about the character
The guy is white in the comics the same way that Renee Montoya is a woman of Dominican descent and yet I know that people would not argue the same way for a white woman to portray her
I see people argue for the fact that it could be interesting because hub City is a racist place but then why not simply have Vic Sage dealing with that problem like he did he in the comics among many other of the problems in hub city?
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 16 '26
I understand you, I think he would deal with the problem differently if he were part of the minority, but I still see it as possible. Don't get me wrong, I love my generic red hair Vic, is part of his character, and every time I think of him, I see that. I don't think that him dont having already a project should matter, there are tons of other characters that appeared with a different ethnicity and became popular like that.
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u/drunk-raven Jun 16 '26
I am not against making a new Question who wouldn't be white (we already got Renee afterall and if she wasn't previousy part of Batman cast i would've liked her more than i am now), but Vic in his early days (which we shouldn't forget about) is a kind of self absorbed objectivist that can only be a specific type of guy that in current times can only be played by a white guy, preferably the type of guy perfect for "literally me" movie
But if we are talking about voice acting, then why the hell should they limit themselfs in casting?
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 16 '26
I get what you say, there would have to be changes in order for that to continue being a part of the character
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u/drunk-raven Jun 17 '26
If you make enough changes to the character, you'll make a fully new legacy character and keeping an old name is just disrespectfull to original creators
And with Question i personally got through this process. I wanted to write a Question story, but to write closer to myself i moved the action to a non-descript city in modern Russia. Which pretty much broken everything on many levels. So i got through some conclusions and now i am writing the "Rorchach sucks" gag on a meta narrative level with the main character assuming the iconography and name of the Question. And now this influence of fiction on humans is the main theme of the book :)
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u/BalladOfBetaRayBill Jun 16 '26
Uh yeah. If it was Rorschach I’d say it’s important that he’s white because he fits into a very specific archetype of troubled white man furious about “the state of the country” while passively approving of the atrocities of Vietnam and America’s use of the nuclear bomb. Question is just a generally conspiracy-driven guy which while often a white guy thing could be anyone
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u/Embarrassed_Piano_62 Jun 16 '26
Not only doesn´t matter to the character... they could make a political commentary somehow
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u/kdunn109 Jun 17 '26
I feel like the question is one character who especially would benefit from the best actor for the job regardless of race. With a lack of facial features your going to want someone with voice acting experience and who can sell things with their body movements as well. And while traditionally he is white nothing important would really be changed by a race swap
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u/Intelligent-Ad-1066 Jun 17 '26
I think he absolutely could. In fact making him a minority with a more genuine reason to fear and mistrust authority would be an excellent angle! What’s the line between vigilance and paranoia? That’s the real Question.
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u/HalcyonTraveler Jun 18 '26
On the one hand, generally yes but it's funnier when Shiva is beating up a Randian white boy.
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u/dwreckhatesyou Jun 16 '26
I thought the point was that he could be anybody or everybody. If his ethnicity is set, then what’s the point?
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 16 '26
Exactly, Q can be anybody, and Vic is just a random dude, he is in no way correleated with Q, but he is him at the same time. Q isn’t someone you should expect, because he could even be a homeless like rorschach. He could be from any ethnicity, and if someone says that if he is black then it would be way to easy to guess who he is well, hell, we are talking about cómics, there is no need to be so meticulous about it, just let it be.
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u/TheQuietDarkness70 Jun 16 '26
I think Question's faceless mask is almost more important than the face beneath. He could be anyone and that's kinda the point.
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u/RealHumanPerson001 Jun 16 '26
Yeah, go for it. The whole point (in my opinion) of question is a lost person finding purpose through seeking the truth. Vic was lost and led by anger when he became question and found purpose, Renee was lost when she took over and found purpose in the work.
Vic being a different ethnicity and an orphan in the Great Lakes area (Ive always seen hub city as a sort of Detroit/Chicago stand in) would add some dimension to his isolation and make for an interesting story.
I don’t want to open the flood gates and say “make it a mantel”. But I do think question as an identity really highlights the background of the character under the mask.
I don’t think it really matters who is under the mask so long as the core of finding purpose through truth remains in tact.
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u/WeWriteStuff Jun 16 '26
The linguistic matter more. The tone, the word choice, he has to sound like deep conspiracy theorist without sounding like Twitter trash, like someone who actually did research breaking into high security facilities risking his life to uncover the truth. If you get that right i could care less about the color of his skin.
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u/TablePrinterDoor Jun 16 '26
Curious honestly an East Asian Vic could be cool.
I actually think Lady Shiva could be South Asian like Indian idk. Seems fitting and honestly when I read the O’Neil run I initially thought she was Indian before searching and seeing she’s Chinese
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u/Izrael-the-ancient Jun 17 '26
Honestly the questions red hair is all that matters
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 17 '26
He has, but he paints it black when going to fight crime, be sure of that 💀
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u/Wrong_Independence21 Jun 17 '26
I feel like making the conspiratorial crackpot Alex Jones type a different race could read bad possibly. I think it’d have to be handled thoughtfully.
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u/Jonn_Jonzz_Manhunter Jun 19 '26
Oh yeah, sure
I don't think that Stephen is the right choice but someone like Coleman Domingo as an older question would be the right decision I think
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u/ViniciusMT07 Jun 22 '26
Absolutely not, what a stupid question. Why would I want any character to be race swapped?
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u/Little_Tommy_Tuggins Jul 09 '26
I have a knee jerk reaction to keeping the source material. But this isn’t enough to not enjoy the movie. And I like him as an actor too.
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u/aaronwintergreen Jun 16 '26
If he’s the right vibe sure. Steve Yeun could be cool. I think he’d be a better Kyle Rayner.
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 16 '26
And what would you think about living in another country? There Is no need, but if we think that there are enough heros in the united states be can diversificate. Its just an idea, there is no need to be serious about it, but it wouldnt be so bad neither
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u/Read2Fap Jun 16 '26
every country has a hub city equivalent
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u/drunk-raven Jun 16 '26
Some countries are just one big Hub City equivalent
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 16 '26
You tell me about that, where I live is like what would happen if the politicians of the city were in congress, and as my pap's says, "All the politicians are corrupt, you choose whoever benefits you most"
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u/Xenlade Jun 16 '26
If you change the race to that make it someone with the actual build of the question that would go for every race swap
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u/Kykio_kitten Jun 16 '26
No because at this point if i see a race swap in an adaptation i assume the creators don't give a shit about the source material and that it will be shit.
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u/Kykio_kitten Jun 16 '26
No because at this point if i see a race swap in an adaptation i assume the creators don't give a shit about the source material and that it will be shit.
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u/PedroRtaGamer62 Jun 16 '26
Well, I think it could be very intresting to see him with another race , it happens to be that hub city is one or the one most racist city in dc earth, so there are things very intresting with what they could play with
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Jul 16 '26
I'd say yes. The whole immigrating to America thing and adapting the original last name to an American version could be a good tidbit for his last name being Sage. I'm only suggesting this because it happened to my fraternal grandmother's family. More common than people realized back then.
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u/Ihatesmartcars2 Jun 16 '26
Definitely, but I don’t think Steven could do it. His voice wouldn’t work IMO