|
 It’s
called Comicsgate and it all started over milkshakes. Last year after the death
of Marvel Editor Flo Steinberg some of Marvel Comics’ female staff went out for
milkshakes to celebrate her legacy. Heather Antos, an assistant editor took a
selfie of the group and posted it on Twitter. Soon after a bunch of disgruntled
fanboys online began attacking her and the rest of the group calling them “fake
geek girls,” “social justice warriors” and accused them of ruining the comics
industry just by existing. Some went so far as to questioned Antos’ sexual availability. A
lot of industry pros rallied together in a Twitter campaign to support her which
seemed to agitate some of the fanboys who would just
would not let it go. One of the people who kept at it was Rich Meyer who
placed himself in the center of the controversy and exponentially acquired more Twitter
followers as a result. The roots of Comicsgate actually began in 2014 in what was called
Gamergate. That on-line controversy was created with a fake sex scandal and an attack on
women who
worked in the video game industry either as creators or reporters covering the
industry. One of the major tactics then was going after any people who remarked that the
attacks were wrong. Online responses were copied and posted that called the
folks against them humorless, paranoid and crazy. Some of those people shifted
their focus and started
attacking comic creators once Gamergate died out. Meyer was and continues to be
one of the people at the center of the Comicsgate tempest in a teapot. He took on
this crusade after seeing
posters of Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) and started complaining that the character should
remain a man and ruminated that since the book wasn’t selling very well why did it
still exist? He
also wondered why Luke Cage had become a family man instead of remaining a
Harlem street fighter. And so he created a YouTube
channel in which is his platform for these and other pressing problems with the
comics industry. Recently he began complaining that that comic companies should just hire
people who oppose the perceived SJW (social justice warrior) agenda and any
creators who support it need to be driven out. On line he has called Ta-Nehisi
Coates a “race hustler” and calls some female creators ugly. He posted something
called The Dark Roast in which he suggested that all the women who work at
Marvel got their way by sleeping with people and suggested that other creators were
pedophiles. Most industry creators have avoided Meyer while a few other creators have
embraced him. At times he has posted the physical
addresses of people who he feels oppose his anti-SJW crusade. Most recently he
crowd funded
on Patreon almost $250,000 to
create a book called Jawbreakers-Lost Souls, which he wrote and was drawn former
Marvel artist Jon Malin and Brett R. Smith. The book was to have been published
by Antarctic Press, however once the book was announced and the connection drawn
to his on-line activities, quite a few stores said they
would not order it. Fearing the negative blow back, Antarctic eventually passed on the
project and then then almost immediately the stores that had made it clear they weren’t going to order the book started
getting harassed. Rumors then circulated that Mark Waid (a recurring target of
the anti-SJW crusade) had
“threatened” Antarctic to not publish the book but the company said Waid had
indeed called the company but just left a message, not a "threat". Currently Jawbreakers has no home and Meyer
says he plans to file a complaint with the FTC (Fair Trade Commission). The
outcome of that complaint will probably end up in defeat as no one has a right to demand a store order something just
because you want them to. |
