scans_daily | Mod Post! Comicsgate

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In a recent Off-Topic Tuesday, the subject of Comicsgate came up and sparked a conversation.

Some of the conversation on that thread started to exceed our community guidelines on courteous discourse, so it was frozen, but it did start the Mod Team thinking about this topic and our stance towards it.

Because, the thing is that the Comicsgate movement is not remotely Off Topic, for us it’s very, very much ON Topic.

The fundamental principle of Comicsgate is to limit the voices that comics are created by, whether it be by women, the LGBTQA community or people of colour.

As you might imagine, this is something that Scans_Daily can be quite unequivocal in our absolute rejection of.

Trying to timeline Comicsgate is a challenge to say the least, it’s tended to go through stages and surges over many months. The first we were aware of it as an issue which was triggered by the sharing of a photograph of some female creative staffers from Marvel at a convivial social gathering, which seemed to trigger a certain mindset and their complaints rapidly descended into an ongoing spiral of gatekeeping, concern trolling and outright misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia, sometimes cloaked under the cover of “concern for the declining sales and standards of comics”,

More recent exploits have included a list of creators to be avoided in order to teach them, and the comics companies, some sort of a lesson, and arguing with Darwyn Cooke’s widow when she fervently derided them for their claim he would have supported their goals.

Oh, and during a recent discussion about the choice of novelist Eve Ewing as the writer for the upcoming Ironheart series (a woman of colour writing about a young woman of colour), and that as someone with no previous comic writing experience she was a “diversity hire”, Neil Gaiman chipped in, pointing out that when he was hired by DC he had no previous comic writing experience, and had only some journalism credits to his name, and as such was in the same situation, but DC had liked his approach and pitch and the rest is history (and a few best selling series and some awards).

For reasons that probably made sense to them(?), proponents of Comicsgate proceeded to tell Neil Gaiman, at length, that he had got his own career wrong. The resulting twitter exchange is… a thing, but you can go look for it yourself if you want to jump down that rabbit hole, and that is entirely up to you and may depend on whatever level of faith in humanity you have.

Most recently a string of high profile creators have come out against the movement, starting with Tom Taylor, and including Jeff Lemire, Tom King, Bill Sienkeiwicz, Gail Simone and many others.

The notion that comics were at their best when written by a set list of straight white guys is beyond bizarre, and is utterly indefensible.

Comics need a wider range of voices, of creators, as writers, artists, inkers, colourists and editorial, because that is the only way to better reflect “the world outside the window” that was Stan Lee’s defining notion behind Marvel Comics in 1964.

Does that mean comics might change? Yes, it likely does, and that is something that should be embraced and celebrated. Will everything work? No, of course not, but that has always been the way of creative enterprises, and that definitely doesn't mean you stop, it means you keep trying. And that will ALWAYS have our support here.

Thank you for your attention,

The Scans_Daily Mod Team

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