POW! Take that, racism. And — WHACK! — take that, homophobia. And — THOOM! — take that, gender stereotyping, cultural bias and religious intolerance.

Identity — and not just the secret kind — has become the increasing focus of the masked heroes, mutants and super beings of the comic-book world.

Batwoman will re-emerge from the DC Comics drawing board this month as a lesbian. Blue Beetle has been reinvented by DC as a Mexican teenager. The Great Ten, a Chinese superhero team, is being unleashed this month as part of DC's magazine 52.

But that's just the tip of the multicultural iceberg.

Luke Cage and Black Panther, two black stalwarts, are getting lots of attention from Marvel these days: Cage as a leader of the Avengers, and Black Panther as the groom-to-be of X-Men's Storm.

"This is our version of the wedding of Charles and Diana," says Joe Quesada, Marvel's editor in chief.

Overseas, capitalizing on the international success of the "Spider-Man" movies, Marvel has teamed with Gotham Entertainment Group to release "Spider-Man India," in which Spider-Man Peter Parker is rechristened Pavitr Prabhakar for a South Asian audience.

It's a far cry from the old days, when comic-book heroes came in two varieties: blond hair and dark hair (which usually came out blue in the comic books). The only character with a specific national or ethnic origin was Superman. He was from Krypton.

Today's superheroes, in contrast, aren't shy about group identification: "X-Men" readers know that Wolverine is Canadian, Storm is African, Nightcrawler is German and Colossus is Russian. And did you know that "Fantastic Four's" Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, is Jewish?

"We're very multicultural and international," Quesada says.

The fact that Quesada is Marvel's first Hispanic top gun is not the only reason he champions multiculturalism, Marvel style.

Comic-book fantasy is believable, he says, to the extent that it's grounded in the real world. And the real world is not exclusively white, Anglo-Saxon, male or heterosexual.

"To use the real world and not reflect (the diversity) is almost callous in a sense," says Quesada, who is of Cuban ancestry.

If comic-book characters come in all colors, so do fans. At last month's Big Apple Conventions Super Show, an estimated 5,000 people bought, traded, collected and talked comic books.

Among them: Hispanic, black, Asian, gay and women fans, says Bill Foster III, who had a booth.

"I've noticed an increase of people of color at comic shows, and an increase in women," says Foster, an English professor at Naugatuck Community College in Connecticut.

His book, "Looking for a Face Like Mine" (Fine Tooth Press), is a study of superheroes of color — something that was in short supply when he was growing up in Philadelphia in the early 1960s.

Back then, there was Lothar, Mandrake the Magician's loin-cloth-clad assistant. And there was Sam Harlem the detective — if you were lucky enough to own a frayed copy of All-Negro Comics, a 1947 attempt to launch a black comic-book line (it lasted one issue). When Foster was a child, to see a dark face in even a walk-on part was exciting.

"When I was reading 'Spider-Man,' I was thrilled to see a black student talking to Peter Parker," Foster says.

In 1966, Marvel's breakthrough character Black Panther (no relation to the political party) was like water in the desert to Foster and many other fans.

"He wasn't just a background character," Foster says. "He was introduced in Marvel's premier comic, 'Fantastic Four.' And he was an African king."

"I think you are going to see that (diversity) trend accelerate and broaden," says Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC. "It's a more interesting story line when everybody isn't the same."