How the Conservative Backlash to Women and POC Evolves In Pop Culture

 

 

In 2017, the angry, mostly straight and white men that harassed women who were fans of video games fell into a lull after years of harassment that included death threats, publishing of private information, and end of people’s careers.

Instead of making drastic changes that would create the ideal landscapes for games and gaming journalism, it instead splintered off into pieces from its own toxicity.

But around that same time, there was something growing off in the distance, waiting for its moment to jump out in social media and beyond. It blew up when Heather Antos, then-editor at Marvel Comics, posted a selfie of herself and other female staff members drinking milkshakes on Twitter. 

Thousands of users jumped onto her, using the customary chain of insults you normally see from your garden-variety misogynist nerd – “SJW”, “fake geek girl”, “virtue signaler” – as their weapon. 

 

That moment became the flashpoint for what is now known as Comicsgate, the almost-logical sequel to its video game original. Supporters of Comicsgate believe, as many reactionary movements do, that the industry is failing because of decisions made as a direct result of diversity. In this case, these right-wing comic fans believe the top comics publishers like Marvel and DC are losing sales because of their perceived changes in long-established characters and their employment of women, POC, and LGBT talent. 

 

 

While most post-Gamergate campaigns fizzled out, Comicsgate maintains its relevancy through two things that have nothing to do with facts or ideas. First, the supporters of this group almost word-for-word take to the tactics used by Gamergate supporters years previously. It makes perfect sense, as the trolls and tricks made from that campaign served as a testing ground for the alt-right and its successful push for Donald Trump into the White House. 

 

And those harassment tactics showed its face in Comicsgate in full force with moves such as the posting of a “blacklist” of people in the industry who were against their agenda. Its two most prominent faces, comics artist Ethan Van Sciver and commentator Richard C. Meyer, opened YouTube channels and posted review videos filled with their own personal brands of contempt toward the people writing and drawing them. 

Meyer’s and Van Sciver’s belief that modern comics mock heteronormative roles and that they promote an insidious left-wing agenda is weaponized through their tweets and video, from which their followers soak in the hate. Their fans carry on the harassment while they can claim plausible deniability. When things do not go their way, they can use their platforms to produce a mirage of victimhood that helps perpetuate the image of Comicsgate as an underdog fighting against the system.

 

 

This is where the second part of Comicsgate’s persistence comes into play.  With a new media landscape that can award YouTubers a lot of money through ad revenue, Meyer created a Diversity & Comics YouTube channel and has amassed a considerable amount of money making videos of his grievances. Ethan Van Sciver also does this as well, but what’s more important is his pull with other conservative-minded writers and artists who have started this small cottage industry of comics created through crowdfunding platforms.

 

Van Sciver’s supporter-backed Cyberfrog series serves as an image of Comicsgate’s success with two lucrative Indiegogo campaigns amassing to over $600,000. Since then he has started a new comic book publishing company. Meyer has also raised almost $400,000 in crowdfunding for a graphic novel that was canceled from its original publishing deal and has since touted it a victory for fans who want traditional male heroes in their stories.

 

The supporters of this supposed movement make any attempt to reimagine the comics industry in their image, going so far as making the late Darwyn Cooke a posthumous member of their cause. But it backfired when, in true fanboy rage fashion, they harassed en masse a woman with a very strong opinion against theirs. It just so happened to be Marsha Cooke, Darwyn’s widow and someone who was not afraid to say something to Van Sciver. 

 

The way Comicsgate supporters attacked Cooke created a response from the comics industry that it had not made since the controversy started years earlier. Well-known members like Jeff Lemire and Bill Sienkiewicz went head-to-head against Comicsgate and their leaders, with Sienkiewicz going off on an expletive-laden Facebook post calling them “creepy racist misogynist uncles.” Even Dave Sim, the legendary indie creator of Cerebus and a highly-polarizing figure for his anti-feminist/LGBT views, stepped away from the movement. 

 

The willful blindness that right-leaning comic book readers allows them to gloss over decades of comics publishing history. They overlook Jack Kirby calling the bluff of a Nazi waiting in the lobby threatening to fight him for his work on Captain America. Stan Lee’s creation of Black Panther was equal parts revolutionary and monetary, as he created the African character as a way to ride on the wave of the civil rights movement. 

As these new alt-right comics pop up under the banner of Comicsgate, proclaiming their stories will take over the ones failing at local comic book stores, they completely disregard the thriving alternative comic scene that has been around since the late 70s. They forget about Los Bros Hernandez and Colleen Doran, whose seminal work on Love and Rockets and A Distant Soil showed that anyone can make a self-published comic with progressive themes and still make it in the business.

 

The Brie-Troll War 

There is no denying that the adaptation of these larger-than-life characters in film and TV has been an economic boon for companies like Marvel and DC. But if there is anything we have learned with how fans acted with the 2016 reboot of the Ghostbusters, they can go bad even before the first reviews come in. 

Consider what has happened to Black Panther and Captain Marvel, two movies with significant firsts in the Marvel franchise history. A Facebook group was shut down after attempting to review-bomb Rotten Tomatoes and negatively skew the user review score. They had successfully campaigned against Star Wars: The Last Jedi after their racist and misogynistic opinions on the female and POC characters in the movie. 

 

With Captain Marvel, the manufactured furor created by sexist movie fans and Comicsgate adherents led to an effective review bombing on Rotten Tomatoes a few weeks before release. As a result, the film review aggregator finally put in new changes to the review system that prevented user reviews prior to theatrical release. In another bizarre twist, conservative personalities on Twitter asked for a boycott, asking their followers to watch Alita Battle Angel on Captain Marvel’s opening weekend instead. 

Despite the intense review bombing Captain Marvel received it still earned $153 million on opening weekend in the U.S., reaching over $500 million worldwide. That hasn't stopped the trolls from continuing, and have switched focus on tainting Captain Marvel''s IMDB review score.

 

So what is their end goal? If you read these reactionaries' articles and tweets or watch their drawn-out YouTube videos they say they want to save their beloved genres and characters from decline. The irony of their gripes is how much cis-hetero white men have control of the situation. They seemed to have forgotten Scarlett Johansson’s casting as the Major in the live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. Perhaps they paid no mind to the numerous modern Egyptian epics starring a bunch of white actors. 

Despite their sustained whining throughout social media, they care very little of the stark realization that there has been very little change in their much-reviled “diversity” in Hollywood. When they turn back to comics and point towards the lowered sales of a particular character that fits within their anti-diversity views, they also fail to point out how the sales paint a truer vision of what people are reading (and its best-selling issues and trade paperbacks led by POC and women-led characters).

Ultimately, battles can be won. To look beyond at what can happen, Milo Yiannopoulos soared to new heights of fame, influence, and money by denigrating female game developers during Gamergate, ultimately becoming one of the poster boys for the alt-right and the Trump campaign. Now he is selling his belongings to pay off a $2-million-dollar debt after being banned from conservative media outlets and platforms like PayPal and Patreon for anti-semitic remarks.

Ethan Van Sciver has yet to release his Cyberfrog comic after its intended November 2018 launch and has been pushed back as far as July 2019 with only pieces of art available for preview. He continues asking his supporters for more money despite being funded at six times the amount asked. 

Where this continual pop culture war goes is up to both sides. It depends on the depths these misguided at best, antagonistic at worst fans are willing to take so that their relatively small number voices will drown out those of the marginalized. Likewise, it will also matter on what women, LGBTQ+, POC, neurodiverse and other groups will do to claim their spot in the conversation.

 Some have tried direct communication with their critics, while others have asked for stronger methods such as de-platforming the incendiary personalities that perpetuate the narrative of "making comics great again." But until then, whether this "-gate" dies as much as the previous, there will be something left from the remains, and the angry few ready to make something new from it.