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Paul writes...

Hi Greg, I know that one of your goals on The Spectacular Spider-Man was to increase the ethnic diversity in Spidey's cast of characters.

With that in mind, why did you change Rhino from (presumably) eastern-European (since his name in the comics was Aleksei Sytsevich) to American (or Irish-American, since his surname became O'Hirn)?

I felt like it went against what you were trying to accomplish by mixing things up with characters like Liz Allen and Ned Lee(ds).

Greg responds...

We felt we had enough Russian villains without adding Rhino. At some point you gotta wonder why all these Russian natives hate Spidey. It made sense in the Cold War context that Spidey - and much of his rogue's gallery - was created in. Made less sense in a modern context.

The O'Hirn name came from the comics; we didn't create it. I seem to recall it was an alias Rhino used at some point.

For good or ill, it had nothing to do with my desire to add diversity. Again for good or ill, all I did was trade one caucasian male for another. A wash.

Response recorded on November 19, 2014