“I am not going to say that everything I have done… that I have no made mistakes. Absolutely I have made mistakes. Has there been a time maybe flights weren’t done on time that they had wanted? Maybe they said they wanted them by 30, 40, 50 days out and they weren’t done at that exact time. But did they have flights? Did they have hotels? Yes they did,” Daniels said.The entire report is by turns fascinating, frustrating and horrifying, and you can read the whole account here.
When asked if she felt bad about the fans who were left without any celebrities that they wanted to see she said, “”No, I don’t feel bad about that, we’ve done nothing to rip anybody off. They knew that when they signed up. They even had to click a box saying I understand this.”
Unfortunately, this knowledge is the overall problem Bendis has in his depiction of Riri Williams. He knows about black pain and the various micro- and macro- aggressions that black people face every day, especially during these particularly fraught times of racial hostility... Basically, Bendis is like your white classmate that took one Africana class and now believes himself to be the purveyor of all knowledge on black life. However, because he acquired his knowledge as an outsider to the culture, the only way he really knows how to depict blackness is through identifiable aspects of The Struggle – all the negative social realities of being black that you see reported on TV, lambasted on Twitter, and through quickly cruising through activist circles in search of easily transferable knowledge about racism without any nuanced understanding of how black people deal with it.
Never in my wildest nightmares would I imagine a black child seeking out racism to fight against in the pursuit of their dreams. Racism isn’t a Sailor Moon villain that waits for us to level up before trying to kick our ass; we are always aware of it and are always affected by it, but one of the best traits that black people have is our ability to bypass that negativity and live our lives despite it, not to specifically spite it.This isn't the first time Bendis' writing for a black character has been criticized. The Nerdist pointed out that Bendis and other white writers writing characters of color often come off as tone-deaf and run the risk of alienating the very fans they want to recruit.
Looking at a diversity initiative as the beginning and end of what's needed to help improve the state of comics is short-sighted and wrong-headed. Instead of just having the same white men tell stories with some characters of color here and there, there should be structure in place for minority writers and artists and creators to tell the stories they want to a mainstream audience. Diversity as the final and only goal is a hollow act that does nothing but reinforce whiteness and the status quo as the default. That's not the world we live in, so why should worlds we get to make up have to be that way? Free your mind, and the audience will follow.
Native Realities, the Albuquerque-based company behind the nation’s only Indigenous Comic Con, is also opening a storefront in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico later this week. It's called Red Planet Books & Comics and it will be the first indigenous focused and owned comic shop in North America. The store will feature comics, toys, games, children’s books and pop art from Native and indigenous artists, as well as new and used books by indigenous writers from around the world. “What we're trying to create is a community-based space,” Francis explained, after pointing out that Native Realities requires a physical office location, so why not make that space all the more inclusive by inviting in the community that the small press serves? “It's not just the selling of objects, it's [the invitation] to come on down and play games all afternoon. To just come and nerd out, for Native folks to know there's a place like that. I say Native folks—and that is our focus—but really, anybody.” In a world where you can access literally any title you've been wanting to pick up online, it is essential that bookstores facilitate those kinds of connections—to be a rallying point for people who have a strong cross section of interests that pull them there. Red Planet will pull in people with many identities—comic nerds to Magic the Gathering nerds to bookworms and “Indiginerds” of all stripes, as Francis endearingly refers to himself and others.
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| Description: Cover for the book "The Animated Brain: An Anthology of Mental Health Experiences In The Animation & Comics Industries" |
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| Description: A panel from a Captain America story from the 1970s, As superhero Falcon looks on,Captain America walks off dejectedly. Caption reads: "This man is now crushed inside. Like other Americans, each in his own way he has seen his trust mocked. And this man is Captain America." |
Per Cincinnati CityBeat, Spencer's 2005 campaign blog called on the mayor of Cincinnati to use eminent domain against Mary Magdalene House (a homeless shelter) and the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.
Here's Spencer: "It's time to stop playing around and get tough here. ... The city must use all of its powers to protect the civic and financial investments that have been made in the area. The glut of social services that encourage panhandling in the district must be addressed."
You read that correctly. Nick Spencer described organizations dedicated to helping homeless people as a "glut of social services that encourage panhandling."He also worked for John McCain's campaign. Some may argue that Spencer is just running on a platform similar to many Republicans, so it's not so unusual, right? He's just echoing an official party platform! You might be able to say that about his policy ideas... but not so much about his racist blogging about black people as thugs, drug dealers, and at one point comparing black folks to being worse than stray dogs! As Cincinatti Black Blog covered at the time of Spencer's campaign, he wrote on his blog stuff after a highway shooting like this, emphasis mine:
Lots of blame to throw around here. Let's try this one: Ross Love. To hell with that guy. He owns the WIZ [a local radio station], then tries to walk around town like he's such an upstanding citizen... maybe you should look into that shit you've got on heavy rotation over at your station. You know, like "Ridin' Dirty" a song about drug dealers trying not to get caught by the cops while they've got crack in the car...What Spencer didn't mention was that Ross Love had sold the radio station 5 years earlier, that "Ridin' Dirty" was about police brutality, that "Ridin' Dirty" also aired on a Clear Channel radio station affiliate run by a white owner that Spencer never called out, and The Ritz was a club that directly competed with a bar that Spencer owned at the time. Oh, and the song was never connected to the shooting in any way by authorities. He was also growing increasingly paranoid, convinced that "thugs and prostitutes" were waiting to shoot at him and hiding guns in trash cans.
And let's give it up one more time for The Ritz ownership [a local club with mostly black clientele]...
I love going to IHOP after we close up the bar, and the place has a big post-Ritz crowd there around the same time... I see stray dogs act with more survival instinct than some of the Ritz clientele.
Bad news... Jump Cafe' space on Main may be leased out to the owners of The Ritz in Roselawn. I'm not kidding-- just when you thought thing couldn't get any worse. The neighborhood is going to have to mobilize in a big way to prevent this from happening... I don't have any hesitation in saying this: if they move in, we go.Writer Kieran Shiach, who also did a great recap of Hydra Cap and related issues earlier this year, sums up my feelings on this:
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| Cover to Secret Empire #0. Art by Mark Brooks. |
Nick Spencer took to twitter with all the class you'd expect:We've also been asked to change our store logos to Hydra symbols. My staff are LGBTQ, Jewish, or both. We are no longer hand-selling Marvel. https://t.co/gQnBfBZC8L— Glamour Toad 🌈🐸🌈 (@NickiColey) April 20, 2017
Then again, for a dude making his living writing super heroes, Nick Spencer doesn't seem to have the greatest grasp of them. Like when he rushed to twitter to give his hot take on Nazis getting punched in public:Haters upon seeing the advance reviews for SECRET EMPIRE 0 pic.twitter.com/lFU0RStBd6— Nick Spencer (@nickspencer) March 23, 2017
Last week, I talked about how Marvel's VP of Sales tried to blame "diversity" for poor comic book sales, and how that assertion is utter bullshit. itch.io user spacetwinks was pretty pissed off about that assertion too, and put together a thorough and damning analysis and response, as described thus:@nickspencer Nick....you just described what a superhero is.— ANTHONY OLIVEIRA (@meakoopa) April 17, 2017
This did not sit well with others, the idea that retailers and Marvel would blame these books for low sales - and it didn't sit well with me, either. So I've hunkered down and put in the hours researching sales data reaching back over a decade in Marvel, and looked for what could possibly be the true culprit in their sales problems.It's offered as a pay what you want download, and is a very insightful read. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
"Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel" is a nearly 30k long essay, a spiritual sequel to The Problems With Comics, a deep dive into the true issues with Marvel's economics and business - and how an obsession with short term profit, the constant renumbering and relaunches and events, all compounded by a complete inability to understand basic marketing techniques or outside audiences, has absolutely destroyed the sales stability of many of their former best selling books, all as they condescend to those who criticize them on their stories, or on how they try to sell comics.
Update: Wow, this post is starting to blow up! My hosting is getting slammed! So if you liked this article and want to see more, you can help support it by pledging a buck or more to my Patreon or by tossing some spare change in the virtual tip jar to the right. Thanks!
Just to be clear, “diversity” has very little to do with the drop in sales in Marvel’s top 10 books. Only three (“The Mighty Thor,” “Invincible Iron Man” and “Black Panther”) can be considered “diverse,” in that they star a lead character who is a woman or a person of color. The rest are series starring white male heroes or teams made up predominantly of white male heroes. These are Marvel’s traditional A-list heroes, being written and drawn by A-list writers and artists (almost all of whom are themselves white men), and yet they are floundering...
While Marvel has admittedly had some misses among its “diverse” titles, it has also had some genuine hits. “The Mighty Thor” remains Marvel’s No. 2=selling ongoing superhero series. “Black Panther” has been a solid hit as well, selling enough single issues to be in Marvel’s top 10, and enough trades to make the bestseller lists. “Invincible Iron Man” (starring Riri Williams) is also in the top 10, showing very little attrition from writer Brian Micahel Bendis’ pre-“Civil War II” series. “Spider-Man” is close behind, selling about 5,000 more copies than Miles Morales’ pre-“Secret Wars” series.”Spider-Gwen” and “All-New Wolverine” are also both doing well, with more than 29,000 copies sold in February for both titles. And then there’s “Ms. Marvel” and “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl,” two series whose trades have also made the bestsellers lists.
Having dug into the data, it’s become clear that diversity is not hurting Marvel. The truth is, Marvel’s “diverse” titles actually sell decently.So if Marvel's more diverse offerings are actually selling decently, bringing in newer clintele and winning awards... then what's up with declining sales? Professionals and fans on twitter have a few ideas:
An idiotic conclusion, @Marvel. I stopped buying your books because of the high price & event fatigue not diversity. https://t.co/uysUOwOBkh— Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) March 31, 2017
Other industry analyses have pointed out stumbling blocks that Marvel has seemed to put in its own way, like trying to make its Inhumans line-up replace the X-Men series while X-Men hemorrhages sales and the Inhumans branding repeats many of the same mistakes of the X-Men before them. The Nerdist has an excellent take-down of how diverse casts written by the same ol' roster of white men leads to a lot of tone-deaf bullcrap that can end up alienating readers old AND new:Marvel thinks diversity is ruining their sales? Idk, MAYBE turning Captain America, a worldwide symbol, into a nazi has something to do— ㅤmanu (@gecrgeblagden) April 2, 2017
When Brian Michael Bendis writes Miles Morales as being upset with a fan who mentions his black heritage, or when Nick Spencer has Sam Wilson apologize to Steve Rogers for any activism-fueled anger he may have displayed in the past, it comes off as tone-deaf and leaves readers understandably less than thrilled. The same comic features multi-ethnic villains who are parodies of the “Social Justice Warrior” stereotype, who shout phrases like “You should be an ally, not helping to defend oppression culture!” and “Consider this your trigger warning!” as they throw grenades at Sam...G. Williow Wilson, the lead behind the currently Hugo-nominated Ms. Marvel points out a few things about authenticity, new audiences, changing markets and industry expectations:
Let’s also remember SHIELD #8 (2015), written by Mark Waid, where a black woman viewing her young son’s corpse remarks, “He was no angel“—the same phrase used to vindicate Michael Brown’s murder.
What I didn’t realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was–apparently–an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this... Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is the world...
Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away.
The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.That last point is something important to remember as far as sales. The relaunched Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (which I covered here back in 2015) only sells a few thousand issues a month... but its trade paperbacks and graphic novel collections sells like hotcakes to little kids via Scholastic Book Fairs. The market is changing, how comics are sold are changing, and the audience is changing. As Alex Brown puts it on Tor.com:
Blaming readers for not buying diverse comics despite the clamor for more is a false narrative. Many of the fans attracted to “diverse” titles are newbies and engage in comics very differently from longtime fans. For a variety of reasons, they tend to wait for the trades or buy digital issues rather than print. The latter is especially true for young adults who generally share digital (and yes, often pirated) issues. Yet the comics industry derives all of its value from how many print issues Diamond Distributors shipped to stores, not from how many issues, trades, or digital copies were actually purchased by readers. Every comics publisher is struggling to walk that customer-centric tightrope, but only Marvel is dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot, then blame the rope for their fall.Looking at a diversity initiative as the beginning and end of what's needed to help improve the state of comics is short-sighted and wrong-headed. Instead of just having the same white men tell stories with some characters of color here and there, there should be structure in place for minority writers and artists and creators to tell the stories they want to a mainstream audience. Diversity as the final and only goal is a hollow act that does nothing but reinforce whiteness and the status quo as the default. That's not the world we live in, so why so worlds we get to make up have to be that way? Free your mind, and the audience will follow.
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| Description: A young black boy faces the camera, giggling. He closes his eyes, then disappears with a puff of black smoke. He reappears on the other side of the room, suddenly reappearing in front of his mother, who drops the bag of groceries she was holding in surprise. |
“Traditionally in comics and really most stories, the protagonist is the one with the powers,” said Piperberg. “You see the world through the eyes of the character with all the abilities usually because they are immediately the most exciting and/or interesting person in the story.”
... “I think a lot of people still don’t get that The Talk is a real thing that black families have to have,” said Piperberg. He admitted that initially the parallels weren’t all that clear to him either. “I think it’s really important to step out of my bubble of privilege to see what’s really going on. To discover and look at injustices that have been swept under the rug, or worse, accepted as the norm by society.”The first issue of Raising Dion is available online to read for free.
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| Description: Illustration of a young black girl leaning forward to kiss the snout of a red dinosaur several times larger than she is, the dino's sharp teeth prominently visible in frame. |
“Mark and I were talking about how whenever people come in with young kids, or even just for Mark’s own kids, we don’t have that many publications that we can give to people that have that broad reach,” Shaw explained to EW. “Generally, we’re skewing a little bit older with a lot of our titles and we wanted to create something that adults and kids could really love, like a Pixar feel. That’s where the tone jumped off for us.”
“For decades now, we have seen more independent publishers taking a gamble on diversification, but always within the underground scene,” she explained. “It’s really important that the mainstream throws up new references like these and it’s an honor to be a part of that change that Marvel is bringing to the comic book creative landscape. A greater number of readers are looking for characters they can identify with, and above all, with the aim that any reader, whatever their background or lifestyle, is capable of transcending their own identities to see themselves in a mirror of entertainment for 20 or 30 minutes without any difference.”With a talented roster, an interesting concept, and plenty of excitement surrounding the title, this is one comic series I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye out for.
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| Description: A caucasian girl with blond hair poses in her home made Ms. Marvel costume- a blue tunic emblazoned with a lightning bolt over a red shirt & cape. |
My daughter was recently invited to a Superhero themed birthday party for Thor Odinson. Naturally she leaped at the opportunity. As I’m currently reading Marvel comics with my daughter at bedtime, I thought it to be perfectly fitting that she goes as the one and only Ms. Marvel. I searched my local Forbidden Planet and to no surprise I found nothing there. ‘No biggie’, it was a long shot, but I’m sure Amazon.co.uk would have something. I was even more disappointed to find the results for girl super hero fans under the search ‘ms.marvel girls outfit’. It started off ok, the first search result being a Spider Girl outfit, closely followed by Captain America girl’s outfit, but that’s where the options stop for 6 year olds. Second page of results give a Spider Girl outfit again but this time in pink (really?) and page three, Sexy Batgirl and Sexy Red Riding Hood, which I don’t need to go into detail over.
OK, time to rack up the dad points here. There’s only one way Ms. Marvel is going to celebrate Thor’s 6th birthday and that means I’ve got to make one. A flustered trip round Croydon resulted with a blue dress (reduced from £60 to £10), the yellow fabric from a pillow (£3), a glittery blue mask (£2) and some cheap red polyester (£2, per foot). A further expense being getting the dress taken in (£18) and the tights and top we already had. I exercised my sewing machine skills and the result, you see above. £32 worth of work pad off in my view. Providing one goes down this route in the future I wish you all success in buying a blue dress in the first place, let alone one in the right size.
When it finally came together, my little one fell in love with it. With hindsight, I’m glad I made it over buying one already put together, but I write this not as a rant but as a plea to make merch more girl inclusive. Ms. Marvel is an incredible concept who empowers a multi-cultural demographic and to be honest, this needs to be pushed harder!!!
I love the avengers as much as the next guy and it’s great that we get to buy cool toys that allow us to shoot silly string webbing from our wrists, or smash things with over sized green fists, but maybe Ms. Marvel Embiggend Fists is what we need to see on the shelves AS WELL AS her angry green counterparts. But should the merch for all of Marvel toys be so male-centric? It may be a shame that this is the truth, but I believe this post could be the start of something good, if even it gets the wheels turning a few degrees.
Yours in hope
Captain Milkshake
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| Description: A copy of "All Star Comics #3" encased in a protective sealed cover. |
Writing about Strange Fruit #1 has been a long time coming... since it was announced on February 20th — Dwayne McDuffie’s birthday. For readers who are unaware, Dwayne McDuffie was one of the most prominent black comics writers and, arguably, one of the most prominent black activists working within the industry. He is one of the few faces that looks like mine whose work specifically aimed to promote other faces like mine in the comics — on the page and off it — and for that alone, he represents a lot. And his birthday was the day BOOM! Studios elected to announce that two white men would be writing and drawing a title about the racist South called Strange Fruit.The entire article is a great read and review of the comic itself.
...No, seriously, stop a second and look at this constellation of events. This comic, announced on Dwayne McDuffie’s birthday, about racism in the South by two white men is being marketed as a “deeply personal passion project.” Do I need to go into why I have some questions about why a story about racism is deeply personal to white people? Do I need to explain why I think that marketing choice was tone-deaf and perhaps even toeing the line into disrespect? Do I need to air my concerns about what that indicates about who this book is being marketed to and why I suspect it is not people who look like me?
