Hello once again Dear Reader! I hope you are quite recovered from the New Year’s festivities and ready to face 2020 with alacrity.
No? Yeah, me neither.
So, let’s get into the news that came out last week, which was a lot, thanks to the holidays and such. It seems like two comics companies decided to start 2020 with some bad calls. These first two stories are seemingly innocuous announcements that have more significance than the PR people at these publishers were probably aware of, so this is basically a PSA:
IF YOU HIRE SHITTY PEOPLE, BE PREPARED FOR THE CONSEQUENCES.
First up, DC’s inexplicable hiring of Blake Northcott, who you might remember was the woman who asked Marvel for a job on Twitter after they fired Chuck Wendig for being too…Chuck Wendig. It was super classy. She’s done nothing but dogwhistle to CGs in the meantime, and it looks like another one of her shameless Twitter pleas actually landed her a gig at DC working with another class act, Sean Gordan Murphy.
The cat is out of the bag: I'm working for DC Comics!
I'm writing a CATWOMAN story, co-plotted by @Sean_G_Murphy (he's doing the covers, too!)
2020 is going to be wild! Can't wait to show you what we've been working on … #meow? pic.twitter.com/e4EmV7MlMy
— Blake Northcott ?? (@BlakeNorthcott) January 7, 2020
Bad DC, no biscuit.
Oh and speaking of bad calls, Dark Horse announced Chelsea Cain will be doing a new comic there. Look, what happened to Cain when working for Marvel was shitty. But her negative (dare I say TERF-y?) response to criticism from the trans community on multiple occasions means that hiring her is a pretty big sign that you don’t care about what your creators say to or about the trans community. Period.
So, Dark Horse needs to go sit in the corner with DC, and DC needs to take a good, hard look at the company they’re keeping because for awhile they were doing so well.
There are two other news pieces I want to talk about that also have a potentially different significance than intended, that give me hope for the industry as a whole.
The GLADD nominees for Outstanding Comic Book were announced last week, and the list is filled with an impressive diversity in terms of the inclusion of comics from the Big3 (DC, Marvel, Image) and from smaller publishers like First Second. There’s even one title that’s a Comixology Original, so kudos for that.
The #GLAADawards nominees for Outstanding Comic Book are… pic.twitter.com/jQH1D0JIjk
— GLAAD (@glaad) January 8, 2020
I love that the nominees include a Star Wars series, because we need more queerness in large franchises, and more recognition when it happens. I love that there’s a Harley Quinn book here because we need more queer Harley and Ivy in the world and I want there to be accolades so that it can happen more. I love that there are several longrunning series–Lumberjanes, Runaways, and The Wicked + Divine–because it shows that these stories can last for years when given the opportunity to succeed. I love that there are both new voices and familiar faces. Kudos to the GLADD nominee committee.
The other thing that gives me hope is Comics Beat naming Raina Telgemeier the Comics Industry Person of the Decade, because, as Heidi MacDonald succinctly put it, “Smile was published in 2010 and nothing has been the same since.” It can feel like something of a backhanded compliment to say that someone’s work being published is more significant than the content of the work itself, but Heidi also reminds us of where it all began–a serialized webcomic on Livejournal. When viewed in that context, it’s possible to see how Telgemeier paved the way for creators like Noelle Stevenson and Ngozi Ukazu, who also came to the attention of the world for their webcomics. Kudos to The Beat for reminding us of where we are, and where we started.
There’s more things that happened, but I’d like to end this week with a short letter to the Comics Industry.
Dear Comics Industry,
Please make it your goal to have 2020 include less of the former, and more of the latter. I’m rooting for you.
