Good morning! Next week is Emerald City Comic Con, and yours truly is looking forward to once again being on the ground to take it in. In the meantime, let’s talk about the past week’s news!
Firstly, after the news of layoffs once again hitting the company hard just before last year’s SDCC, Oni-Lion Forge has announced the hiring of a new Editor-in-Chief. Sierra Hahn was previously an Executive Editor for BOOM! Studios, and will be joining her former BOOM! compatriot Hunter Gorinson in determining a new direction for the beleaguered company. One hopes this new direction will perhaps find a way to be fairer to people of color, hm?
Do you miss the Ultimate universe? You know, that reinvented version of the Marvel universe conceived to attract new readers in the early 2000s, featuring such delightful events as The Hulk tearing Wolverine in half, the Blob eating the Wasp, and Mr. Fantastic becoming an amoral multiversal threat known as The Maker? Well, you’re in luck! Jonathan Hickman and Bryan Hitch are getting together for Ultimate Invasion, presumably so that Miles Morales can have a heartfelt reunion with all the superheroes he used to know. Either that or so that Reed and Xavier can compliment each other on their black bodysuit/giant helmet ensembles.
Those announcements aside, the last week has been largely full of one major story: The removal of Dilbert from several national newspapers following creator Scott Adams’ wildly racist rant on his podcast. In an editorial on Friday, Cleveland Plain Dealer editor explained the move. The Plain Dealer‘s choice was echoed by several other papers across the country, including The Oregonian and the Los Angeles Times. It’s a capstone event on a building tide of bigotry that Adams has been spouting for years now. He’s often canny about his rhetoric, which has allowed him to skate by on a lot of thin veils, but he’s gone a step further this time in openly declaring that Black people are a hate group. Presumably, even this will not be enough to fully tank his career, and I imagine some right-wing mag or another will happily take him on as a regular cartoonist. Still, seeing a terrible person receiving at least some kind of consequence is nice.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Take care of yourselves!
