shaky red-faced men of marvel enjoy banner weekend out-worsting one another

Looks like some of the top personalities at Marvel Comics have shifted from unwittingly fanning the flames of their troll problem to inciting violence against a comics critic. As someone who occasionally writes about Marvel, I find this shift alarming. Probably everyone should? It seems to me the next logical step will be stirring up harassment against their own fans. 

I mean, golly. Why (apart from blatant emotional problems) does Mark Waid think that someone should put a fist through a comics journalist's smug-ass face? Well, you see, Jude Terror wrote several articles for Bleeding Cool about how it is absurd, yet in no way surprising, that Marvel decided to blame its lagging sales on “diverse characters” because their core audience “didn’t want female characters out there." I mean, really, will the Diverse ever stop asking Marvel for handouts??

Marvel isn't running a charity, y'all.

Worse than all that, if you can even believe it, Jude Terror had the gall to quote--at length--Marvel’s vice president of sales, David Gabriel, in one of these articles. Out of bounds, asshole!!! Thankfully, Marvel’s dimmest self-appointed spokesboy quickly pointed out that Terror had cherry-picked the five-paragraph quote for his fake news post:

Seriously, science should study this incredible man, who's out there out-worsting himself on twitter dot com seven days a week.

Anyway, I know what you’re thinking: how seriously should we take these veiled threats from Mark Waid and Tom Brevoort? They plainly don’t intend to punch Jude Terror or anyone else in the face, ever--and even if they tried, either one of em looks like he might have a heart attack if he so much as stands up too quickly.

No, I really doubt those guys pose much of a threat. But here's the thing: Waid and Brevoort have a combined Twitter following of 130,000 people—many of whom, according to Marvel’s VP of sales, are the kinds of fans who “didn’t want female characters out there” (i.e., disgruntled white men).

I don't think it's much of a leap to say that those are the kind of followers who might just go to a comics convention and punch someone in the face. Maybe worse.

You know who doesn’t tend to have violent, disgruntled followers? Comics critics who write about social justice. (Also, just as a point of comparison, Jude Terror has 549 followers on Twitter.) Yet I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Nick Spencer bang on about how criticism (against his consistently bad choices, as both a writer and a person in the world) incites violence...somehow? He's never been too clear on how that works.

Nick...the people who read Women Write About Comics aren't the ones you have to worry about, I assure you. I think all the time about how crazy it is that this guy has appropriated other comics people’s (legitimate) fears, but that’s another post for another day.

(Meanwhile, I can only hope that making fun of Nick Spencer for being a giant pussy isn't inciting violence against him. Let's all pray on it.)

Is there no one on Marvel’s public relations, human resources, or legal teams who’s savvy enough to grasp that Marvel’s employees should maybe not be out in the world representing them in this way? Are there not potential legal implications for your company when your senior vice president of publishing implies that, if he knew a fellow industry professional’s legal name, he would hunt him down and physically assault him? Is there no one in communications who understands that this type of stuff repulses the very demographics that Marvel should be aggressively going after, in terms of sales (...or grasps that the people they seem to consider their core audience don't seem to be buying enough comics)? Could someone in human resources maybe arrange for an anger-management course for the shaky red-faced men of Marvel? Something? Anything? 

My guess is that these are the kind of blind spots you have when you haven’t hired enough “diverse characters” and your company culture sucks. The dumb irony of it is that the absolute smartest thing that Marvel could do for itself is hire some of its most vocal critics as consultants. Do a focus group, at the very least, my god. But since they’re never going to do that, I'll give Marvel a free piece of advice: Poach whoever the social media nazi is at DC. Stat. 

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one more thing on marvel

A quick thought experiment:

Pretend for a moment that Tom Brevoort & Co. are totally right. 

Imagine Brevoort expressed this opinion in a more politic way instead of being real snide about it, like he was trying to explain Monopoly to an infant. Imagine that every new Marvel title was promoted with the same vigor to its target audience, and that every title lived long enough to factor in its performance in trade. Ignore Marvel's enormous roster of white male creators, who are encouraged to write all different kinds of characters with varying degrees of commercial and artistic success. Pretend that Axel Alonso's attempt to appease his core audience of trolls by talking about "SJWs" with contempt (even as he angles for SJW money with "All New, All Inclusive") wasn't a completely transparent attempt to have his cake and eat it too, and that it appealed to you (and/or trolls) on any level. Set aside your distaste for the way these men talk about comics sales using the language of social justice. Forget the little fantasy you created where they purse their lips and mouth "capitalism" at themselves in the mirror before giving themselves double guns. Imagine the direct market weren't really stupid and confusing. You don't ever have to think about the direct market again--it now exists in a place beyond thoughts, and it's a perfect 10, and you're fucking the direct market the way you like best on a pile of $100 bills strewn across sheets made of the purest satin. 

Almost there. Now take a deep breath: in, out. Now in again, and this time hold it till you're too lightheaded to think good. Relax your shoulders, soften the belly, and let your capacity for logic drift away. 

Okay. In your perfectly clear mind, a single thought is emerging: these men are of strong mind and noble purpose, and you agree with absolutely everything they say. 

Now here's the experiment: follow this threat thought, which I have seen everywhere, to its logical conclusion.

That representation will vanish. In other words: Marvel will stop hiring women, people of color, LGBT creators, etc. As a company, it will abandon even the pretense of caring about inclusion.

If you want more of what you like--inclusive hiring practices for creators--you'd better pony up quick, because the success of Ms. Marvel and Black Panther can only fund so many egregiously lackluster titles headed by Marvel's white male creators. That's just business, baby.

Uh...point is, if you hate harassment, go buy Mockingbird. There's only one thing to do about it, and that's support those books and those creators with your wallets. (That's a verbatim quote, by the way.)

How does it feel to finally be thinking in terms of stone-cold logic, you bleeding-heart social justice warrior pieces of shit? 

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marvel, please stop fanning the flames of your troll problem

Wherever there's a woman to complain about the toxic fandom surrounding superhero comics, there is a man associated with Marvel who tries to come to the rescue with a bunch of condescending, paternalistic tweets. As a human with some capacity for logic, I find this deeply annoying. But as a woman on Twitter, I can't just write it off as bullshit. Men of Marvel, listen up: it's not just that you're not helping. You are also actively making things worse.

Whether you're a member of the Marvel leadership team or one of their freelance artists, you need to carefully consider how you choose to frame the discussion of whatever corner of toxic fandom it is that you're talking about today. Yesterday I saw a lot of bad tweets about Chelsea Cain. Let's set aside for the moment how dumb they were and talk about how they feed the trolls.

1. Framing the Chelsea Cain conversation in terms of sales

Two unrelated things happened around the same time: Mockingbird got cancelled and Chelsea Cain quit Twitter because of harassment. Many people have conflated these two issues, or prefer to focus on one instead of the other, and one result was a lot of Marvel men tweeting about how people should buy Cain's comics (or promote diversity by buying comics in general). But here's the thing: I didn't see Chelsea Cain complain about people not buying her comic. I saw her complain about getting harassed on Twitter.

Let's set aside the fact that the dudes who like to fling around the word "capitalism" in these discussions tend to leave a lot of factors out of their analysis (problems with the direct market, particularly with regard to attracting new comics readers; relative lack of institutional promotion for new titles or titles with lesser-known characters, etc.). When you respond to a concern about harassment with an observation about low sales, you're adding fuel to fire by (a) flattering trolls who consider themselves your True Readership and (b) giving their abuse a veneer of respectability by pretending they're talking about big important man business (i.e., money).  Just for example, here's an image I noticed in the feed of a literal nazi who dragged me for saying the word "Marvel" on Twitter yesterday.

What a cute little pun, right? Let me break this down for you: my nazi troll wasn't really talking about sales, and neither was Chelsea Cain.

Here is the only germane point with regard to the intersection of sales and harassment: When female creators can't use Twitter, they can't promote their comics. And they really need to be using Twitter to promote their comics because Marvel doesn't seem to have a whole lot of patience for letting new books find their audience.

2.  Framing critics of Marvel as unreasonable adversaries in a civil war

Listen, I get it. You've built your whole world around melodramatic men in tights who are always picking fights with melodramatic men in other tights, and that maybe colors the way you see things. But you need to lay off the histrionics. Please give all your "if you're not with us, you're against the very idea of diversity" histrionic bullshit a fucking rest and especially stop using metaphors of violence when you describe how polite critics are interacting with you on twitter. I understand this seems like semantics to you, but I promise you that it matters.

Trolls routinely threaten women and people of color with actual violence. When you use language like this, it encourages them on multiple levels. For one thing, you're drawing a false equivalence between words of polite disagreement and threats of physical harm. Remember that trolls are often very sick, very stupid, and/or very confused. Perhaps you understand that criticizing Brian Michael Bendis is not literally starting a war, but trolls don't necessarily grasp that. And when they perceive people they already conceptualize as their enemy to be "attacking" their heroes, they are provoked.

The last thing to consider is the possibility that when people are constantly telling you that your actions cause them unhappiness or harm, you are not in fact on their side, no matter how much you wish to be. You know how in your make-believe stories the guy in the other tights doesn't always realize that he's bad? You know how sometimes those bad guys aren't really evil, just misguided? Maybe that's you.
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