Topic: Race & Equity in the Comics Industry
Answered: Yes
Episode: Ep3
Time mark: 01:00:00
Full Ep. Notes: Ep3 Show Notes
Ulises Farinas and Patrick talked about equity in the comic book industry. We mentioned the recent story of Iron Man being relaunched as a teenage female character by Brian Michael Bendis.
- Patrick discussed:
Further reading for suggestions:
Excerpt from the Wired article: “[Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief] Axel Alonso said Marvel has been in a long dialogue with rap music, but that isn’t true. It’s a long monologue, from rap to Marvel, with Marvel never really giving back like it should or could,” wrote critic and editor David Brothers on his personal Tumblr account, pointing to Whitney Taylor’s Medium essay “The Fabric of Appropriation” as a valuable explainer for how cultural appropriation differs from inspiration. “If you don’t employ black creators, and then you purport to celebrate a black art form for profit (and props on hiring a few ferociously talented black artists for the gig!), people are going to ask why that aspect of black culture is worth celebrating but black creatives aren’t worth hiring.”
Another beautifully phrased sentiment from celebrated creator C. Spike Trotman: “Diversity is legitimacy. It’s sincerity. It’s truthiness, to borrow a certain expression,” says Trotman. “Diverse storytellers mean diverse personal experiences being brought to the table, and more honest depictions of those experiences on the page in fiction. It’s not impossible for a creator to write about an experience they’ve never had; that would be a silly thing to say. But Cis Hetero White Male isn’t the default mode of human. Experiences influence creativity, and there need to be more than one set of experiences being reflected on the page.”