Greetings-
As a longtime comic book fan, I’ve had some thoughts regarding how I feel about a switch on a character. I’ve decided to write up this standardized response, because this really sums up how I feel.
And hey, these are all opinions. You don’t have to agree with me on some or any of these points.
Here we go!
- Fine. Seriously. I don’t really care if a black woman is inside an Iron Man suit. I know that not caring can come off as callous or like I don’t care about issues of representation, but it’s not that (read on). It just doesn’t bother me, and I’m more interested in the stories and comics that follow the announcement than the announcement itself.
- On the topic of the announcement itself, this seems to be what garners the most news and discussion. See: Captain America. See: Captain Marvel. See: Thor. I hear a lot about it when it’s announced, but I rarely hear much about it afterwards. Which is fine because afterwards is when I get into a comic anyway. I rarely read monthly issues and prefer trades, so a book has been running for something like 8 months by the time I read word ballon one. I just find it troubling that a storm brews and then just kind of craps out once the actual material is available. By the time I’ve read the thing, nobody is talking about it anymore! It’s an odd thing when there’s so much discussion about a thing before the thing even exists. See: Ghostbusters (2016). I have a hard time really discussing Ghostbusters 2016 because I haven’t fucking seen it, nor has anyone else, right? I can’t really make a strong argument about it, any/either way, because I know almost nothing about it.
- I’m mostly interested in whether the story, dialog, and art are good. If a black woman is Iron Man, and that black woman’s storylines are boring and dialog is terrible, if she’s poorly rendered, then I won’t like the book. If the dialog is funny or really great, if the art is incredible, if the storyline is pretty interesting, I’m in. It doesn’t even really have to be all three. 2 is the likely sweet spot. 1 can work if the 1 great aspect is pretty damn undeniable.
- Something that non-comics people seem to misunderstand a lot, many comic fans will have favorite characters, but they’re a lot more likely to follow favorite creators to whichever project they’re working on. I don’t love The Flash, but when Mark Waid was writing the book, I read The Flash. I don’t usually care what Warren Ellis is doing, I’ll just read it. You don’t have to sell me on it. So, the creative team, to me, is often more predictive of my enjoyment than the hero in question and whether that hero is in their classic form or revamped form.
- Do I see the value of representation? Totally. But, if I depart from saying what’s popular and take a risky dive into saying what’s on my mind, do I sometimes think that comic book companies throw their weight behind visual representation and then leave out the story? Yes. Do I read comics where the stories are more about representation than about superhero doing superhero stuff? Yes. Do I think those are inherently bad? No. Do I find them pleasurable, personally, to the point I’ll continue reading them? Probably not. Do I have to be the audience for everything? No. Do I have the right to read comics and dislike them for comic book reasons even though they make a positive step in the direction of diversity? Yes, I think so. Will I continue to read comics with character swaps even though I might not like them, as comics? Totally. Because this is a constant risk with comics, regardless. You might not like them. For comic book reasons. And I think there are sound reasons to dislike a comic book because it’s a matter of taste. Does disliking a comic book, for comic book reasons, with a black female character make me a racist? No. Not in my opinion. It may in yours, and that’s fine because we don’t have to agree on everything. My opinion is that a comic with a black female lead can still be a bad read even if it does something good or has good intentions. It can also be great. We’ll have to see!
- I do find something problematic, which is that when we talk about representation, we’re talking about visuals on the page. There aren’t a ton of black women working as writers in mainstream comics. The diversity we see is in a black woman being written by a white man, and I would ask, what’s the value of that placed against the value of a white male character as written by a black woman? Would it be more impactful if, instead of Lady Thor being written by Jason Aaron, Man Thor was being written by a woman? As someone who follows creators more than characters, I would be more interested to see creators from different backgrounds than seeing more characters switching things up. It’s not an either/or proposition, but I’m using the either/or to shed some light on where I see a thread of thinking that I don’t totally follow. I’m not demanding this from Marvel or other companies either because I’m sure that’s a whole ‘nother level of debate. But what I will say is that, in my opinion, a hiring announcement is more interesting than an announcement regarding a character swap. At the same time, I know the author names don’t necessarily mean a lot to most of the world, and I accept that.
- I also think that when we talk about the representation of women in mainstream comics, we’re too rarely looking at artists. There are a lot of female artists whose work I’ve really enjoyed. Erica Henderson, Stacey Lee, Sara Pichelli to name a few. Fiona Staples is popular, and although I feel like the one person on Earth who didn’t love her stuff in Saga, I think she knocked it out of the park on the Archie relaunch. Depending on the writer, the writer/artist collaboration is a pretty big deal in comics, and artists are shouldering a lot of the storytelling load. Just read something with terrible art if you doubt that. When we look for representation in comics, I think it’s important to remember that if a woman is drawing a book, that’s relevant creative diversity. Artists have always, always gotten the short straw when it comes to creative credit, going back to the birth of comics, and we don’t need to keep playing that game.
- In addition, I’ve long felt that some of the best working artists and writers are found in the indie scene. I’ve found a lot to love there. In the past, Chris Ware, James Kolchalka, and Jeffrey Brown (most of whom are no longer indie. That’s the problem with indie. It gets popular, then it’s not indie anymore. *sigh*). Currently, I really recommend Julia Wertz, Kate Beaton, and Allie Brosch (who you probably already know, but she’s awesome and I daresay redefines what comics are for a lot of people). Comics are not just Avengers and Supermen. Part of what made comics great for a long time is that the general public didn’t give a shit, freeing comics to do whatever they wanted, freeing kids to buy stories that were probably too grown-up for them, but their parents didn’t care because, Eh, it’s just comics. Indie or indie-adjacent books (basically, anything that doesn’t have a recognizable superhero) still exist in that lawless space, and they are a great place to go looking for some different points of view. I’m not saying, “Here, people who aren’t white men, these indie books are for you.” I’m saying that I’ve often felt like mainstream comics didn’t speak to me even when their characters were similar to me in terms of demographics, and indies provided what I was looking for in those times.
- I can’t fathom how people form such strong opinions on the fact of something like a black Captain America before the events have even occurred. I have two speeds when it comes to comics: mild excitement (I’m an adult, I get excited over NOTHING except possibly a 10-hour sleep) or general, non-aggressive disinterest. When it comes to an announcement in comics, I have one speed: Cool. I guess we’ll see what happens over the next eight months when the comics are actually brought out of someone’s head and into tangible existence. The amount of debate back and forth, the legions of straw men set up and knocked down, it’s kinda ridiculous. Let the thing happen and then see if it’s any good. What else can you do?
- The reason that most comics announcements don’t light a big fire for me is simply because they tend to involve the makeup of a character or a big moment, but not a story arc. Okay, Silver Surfer is now a transgender teen. But what is he DOING? Captain America says Hail Hydra, and…what happens next? Where’s this going? What is he doing? I don’t generally get excited by a book of pure text when I hear the description of a character. It’s when I hear what that particular character is doing or caught up in that I get interested.
- I DO have one swappy thing that I’m tired of and I think is a cheap ploy. It’s not that the new Iron Man is black or that she’s a woman. It’s that she’s a teenager. She’s 15. My understanding of the way this teenage sidekick thing started was, basically, publishers of comics wanted a kid in the book so that the kids at home had someone to identify with. Kids didn’t see themselves in Captain America, but they could see themselves in Bucky. Batman and Robin. This cropped up time and again as we moved forward with characters like Impulse shadowing the Flash. But, recently, a lot of reboots have seen characters also change their age, and this is the part I find the most unexciting, from a story perspective. Miles Morales was 13. Nova seemed to be even younger. Ms. Marvel is in high school.What I don’t enjoy about this, as much, is that the characters really can do no wrong. When you’re 13, how much can you be blamed for a bad decision or a screw-up? Especially if you’re talking a screw-up that involves Spider-Man superpowers? If I’d had Spider-Man powers when I was 13, I would have dropped out of school and spent my days hiding in the ceiling of the mall, dropping down in the night to steal pornography and soft pretzels. Using my powers…not for evil, but mostly for nothing of value. When you’re a teenager and you’re out of your depth, it’s cool. You’re just a teen! When you’re a teenage and you make a selfish decision, hey, it’s cuz you’re a teen and you did it for the lulz! To take it to a more serious level, can I forgive a teen for just about anything, ten years later, if they feel bad about it? Pretty much, yeah. I hope I’m not saying something crazy, but I think most teens are (or feel) victimized or disenfranchised, and getting through the teen years is really all a person can do. That’s why, for me, teen characters just aren’t interesting. Anything they do can be chalked up to teen-ness, and a teenage character doesn’t really have to face the fact that he/she is an adult fuckup who needs to get their shit together. Plus, damn, we have plenty of teen characters already. Give me an oldster already. An old man gets the power of Nova. He has about 8 good months, but what the hell? Let’s do this thing.
- It’s hard, sometimes, as a comic book fan, to put cynicism about announcements to bed. Read comics long enough and you’ll be subject to enough world-shattering events that amounted to nothing to give you a nice, thick crust of disbelief. I remember Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Death of Superman, Heroes Reborn. I remember both Green Lantern and The Flash being replaced. And I remember The Return of Superman, the end of the Heroes Reborn universe, and the inevitable return of the original Flash and Green Lantern. I remember Final Night, which ended up just being a crappy night, not so much the last one ever. I remember Blackest Night, which was more confusing than anything. I remember the DC’s New 52. I remember The Ultimate line. I remember the deaths of more minor characters like Colossus, and I remember his resurrection. I remember Identity Crisis, Countdown to Infinite Crisis, and then Infinite Crisis. I know this all sounds like a bunch of gobble-dee-gook, but what I’m getting at here is that comics fans have seen a lot of change, a lot of movement, and while some of it results in damn good stories, some of it results in crappy stories that are undone before you know it. There are some comics fans whose spidey sense perks up whenever it looks like a comic book company might be doing something to sell a new issue #1 or reboot something or, basically, just pull a fast one to get a little more cash. I don’t think that’s what every announcement is, but I do think there are some that go this way, and I don’t think comic buyers are wrong to be cautious when it comes to ferreting out whether a company is putting out great material or making the appearance of big shifts to sell books. Or both. Both happens sometimes, and that works out great.
- Like it is with just about anything, the mainstream media never gets this shit right. I had a long-ass, super-nerd example, but then I wrote this next part, and I like it, so I’ll just put it here and skip the nerd shit: Rather than reading an article about a swap in a comic, rather than reading the comments on that article, rather than reading the article generated because of the comments made on the first article, and so on, just read the goddamn comics already. Does reading an article ABOUT a book ever replace reading the book? Fuck no. And neither does reading an article about a comic. Neither does reading a comment on an article, and neither does leaving a reply to a comment. Read the comics.
- And if you REALLY want to make a difference, buy, read, and review the comics that you think are worthwhile. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther #1 is the top selling comic of this year so far. I’m not revealing a big secret, if you want to see diversity in comics, buy, read, and review. Marvel, I promise you, cares more about sales than they do articles, tweets, and forum discussions.
- I definitely consider comics to be art, and in the realm of art, there is a lot of room for different, nuanced, detailed opinions. And that’s what these are, opinions. Not facts, not hard data. These are opinions. For the first time in a long time, I’ve opened the discussion below as a show of commitment to the idea that right and wrong aren’t important in the discussion of arts. It’s the discussion. There’s no destination here. So, if you’d like, feel free to leave a comment.