4 Unfair Assumptions About Comic Book Readers

2. The Problem Is With Fans Not Publishers

With only a few exceptions of real note, most comic book creators are white men. That much is undeniable. Both Marvel and DC appear to be making efforts to hire a more diverse staff, but it seems that a lot of minority creators have a hard time separating their politics from their work. Again, this isn’t always a bad thing. William Moulton Marston had a very clear agenda when he created Wonder Woman and that character has endured for seventy five years. Black Panther was also politically charged when he was created in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. But T’Challa wasn’t fighting characters who used water hoses as weapons or getting called “boy” by southern redneck supervillains; he was a character in his own right, not a political mouthpiece.

Note that Marvel and DC can point to the increase of diverse characters and use that as an example of their progress in the right direction. The issue of a more diverse pool of writers and artists is dealt with much more quietly. The point is, even though there has been a significant rise in minority characters, most of them have been created and written by white men. Instead of forcing white guys to work on bumping the numbers, maybe a stable of creators with different backgrounds would cause a natural and organic expansion of diversity within the books. That’s not to say that minority characters should only be written by minority creators. That would be absurd. It’s just that maybe Geoff Johns isn’t the best person to envision what it might feel like to be a Muslim man who is suspected of being a terrorist. How is Simon Baz, who was designed with what is essentially a ski mask and carries a gun despite having powerful alien technology, supposed to be a step in the right direction? G. Willow Wilson may be Muslim herself, and in theory a more appropriate writer for the Muslim Ms. Marvel, but she’s still a white woman from New Jersey.

Could it be that Marvel and DC’s obvious tokenism is failing to resonate with the minorities they’re trying to woo? Perhaps that’s why books like Nighthawk and Mockingbird end up getting canceled. What are the Big 2 doing to actually broaden the market? Are they devoting money to advertising in all-new, all-different places? Are they legitimately trying to appeal to the large audience of moviegoers who make these superhero films into billion dollar juggernauts? Or are they only cynically ordering changes that will make the headlines on comic book sites that are only seen by people invested in the industry to begin with? When Nighthawk was canceled there was a huge outcry and a lot of talk on social media, but it felt like a lot of people didn’t even know about the book until the announcement. What is really being done to appeal to these very vocal people who are supposedly clamoring for more minority characters? It’s not enough to just push it in the Previews book.

How about just one advertisement before a movie? Is it really that much of a waste of money?