While GamerGate laid the groundwork for a change in how the public interacted with creators, critics, and publishers, bad faith actors took note of how easily co-opted an online movement can be (Romano, 2021). We already learned how Breitbart, Stormfront, and other far-right political propagandists embraced GamerGate as a way to mainstream their ideas while swelling their ranks, but that’s not the whole story. The increased focus on political issues and outright xenophobic or misogynistic harassment within GamerGate and throughout Twitter gave rise to the alt-right and extremist culture that fueled President Trump’s election and the storming of the U.S. capitol.This political push online may seem like the beginning of ComicsGate, which published a blacklist of creators’ names that were seen as Social Justice Warriors (SJW) to boycott, but the actual start is far more similar to GamerGate than just that (Francisco, 2018). It all starts with a group of women and some milkshakes.
Mockingbird
Before we get to that, I think it’s important to discuss the state of comic book fandom and the world at this time. By late 2016, GamerGate had already taken hold of some of the major online arenas and led to several death threats against women. It’s hard to underline just how big of a cultural shift this was at the time, and comic book communities were not immune. When the 8th issue of Mockingbird was released featuring a cover by artist Joelle Jones and depicting the titular character wearing a T-shirt with the phrase, “Ask me about my feminist agenda,” social media went wild (Clark, 2016). The mere presence of a woman, even a fictional one, advocating for feminism was enough to cause immediate harassment of those involved. The comic, the first to be headlined by the Mockingbird character, was also the first foray of best-selling novelist Chelsea Cain into comic book writing. Unfortunately, it also led to the first instance of Cain needing to block Twitter users due to threatening messages. Not long after the harassment became public knowledge, several prominent creators came out to condemn the behavior, with most tweeting the hashtag #StandwithChelseaCain. The abuse was too much, however, and Chelsea deleted her account shortly after. The harassers had accomplished their goal: chasing away a woman who dared to make their opinion heard. From here, it would only get worse.
The Milkshake Incident
By July of 2017, Marvel Comics had dominated the comic book landscape, a feat which was not unusual, but this, unfortunately coincided with a steep decline for the industry as a whole (Schedeen, 2018). So as Marvel came out on top, their sales figures fell short of previous years, which indicated something might be going wrong in the realm of comics. This drop in sales is pointed to by critics as an indicator of a growing frustration with the company’s politics, but the truth shows there are several issues that plagued Marvel, and the industry, throughout the year (Francisco, 2018; McMillan, 2017a). Comics just weren’t selling like they used to. Public perception, however, became laser focused on the company sitting on top.
As The Hollywood Reporter detailed, nearly every month of 2017 brought a new controversy to Marvel Comics (McMillan, 2017a). From Captain America supposedly being a nazi all along to an artist sneaking political messages into their art about forbidding Christian leaders in a muslim nation, scandal was no stranger to the company (McMillan, 2017a; McMillan, 2017b). For those only somewhat paying attention, it seemed there was always something new to be concerned with, and, therefore, none of it could be considered too concerning. If the norm is that there is always a reason to be upset, then the narrative becomes boring. This is an easy way for general audiences or mainstream news to miss a new controversy. The stakes need to be raised to garner more attention. In fact, the very article I’ve referenced that details the onslaught of public outrage at Marvel ignores the incident that started the ComicsGate movement entirely, since it had little-to-no real impact on mainstream comics news. It’s easy to see why, even without the litany of other issues Marvel happened to be dealing with. It seemed inconsequential because that’s exactly what it was. An editor for Marvel named Heather Antos gathered with some of her friends in honor of Flo Steinberg, the recently deceased industry icon partially responsible for the company’s growth into a juggernaut. To commemorate the event, the women posted a picture of themselves enjoying milkshakes, a favorite of Steinbergs, on Twitter (Francisco, 2018). For some, the image of women enjoying themselves was a step too far. The outpour of anger started immediately.
As The Mary Sue reported:
“The public tweets included plenty of the usual insults and misogyny: “fake geek girls,” “the creepiest collection of stereotypical SJWs anyone could possibly imagine,” and “Gee, I can’t imagine why Marvel’s sales are in the toilet.” Others took to harassing Antos via direct message (Jasper, 2017).”
Some fans rushed to defend Antos, but it was too late. Something had started. While this wasn’t the first issue to bring such vitriol, it was definitely seen by many as a concerted effort to blame social causes for declining sales or what they deemed poor storytelling. After all, if these women were being promoted on the basis of being women, then clearly the storytelling would suffer. This sentiment may seem odd, but the full picture would come to focus as the movement began in earnest. Still, ComicsGate didn’t quite have a strong stance, yet. That changed just a few short months later when Marvel faced a very rough time at New York Comic Con (Francisco, 2017).
While many issues arose in New York, the strangest happened before the convention even began. While Diamond held their exclusive breakfast panel for comic book retailers, some in attendance expressed dismay over Marvel’s recent creative decisions (Francisco, 2017). Some of these retailers demonstrated anger at the increased portrayal of non-white, non-male headlining characters. Words like “homo” and “black” were shouted alongside “freaking females,” with one retailer going so far as to complain about the recently out Iceman “kissing other men.” The push against social progress had now found a voice at the table.
Social Justice Comics
This may come as a surprise to some, but comic books have long had a history on both progressive and regressive sides of the aisle. For every positive representation of a person of color is a story of a judge intervening to refuse a black man to be represented as an astronaut (Cronin, 2019). For every strong female character, there are dozens of women that exist solely as objects or plot points. Queer and disabled characters often only get a handful of stories spread out over decades, and, even then, they’re often not handled well. None of this is to say that the good representation that’s out there, or the hard work put in by editors, writers, and artists means nothing. These things should be applauded, especially those that did the work in a time where they weren’t all that popular, like the aforementioned black astronaut in Weird Fantasy. To them, it was important to find creative ways to get their message across because the message itself was important. Like Marvel’s own X-Men, who utilize the mutant metaphor as a way to represent wildly different communities. This is a fun way to tell a story with a deeper meaning, but this often comes at the expense of actually representing these communities or what they go through.
As Jay Ediden said to the Daily Beast:
“Saying the X-Men are a metaphor for the black experience in America in an America where black people are extremely disproportionately targeted for police violence because of projected and inaccurate perceptions of threat is a problem. When you try to use it as a metaphor directly for that, it falls apart, and it falls apart in potentially damaging ways (Ackerman, 2018).”
One of these damaging ways is a near erasure of the communities that the metaphor represents. After all, if Cyclops is representing the disabled community, then you still aren’t actually representing someone with a disability. The mutant metaphor can work, but if it takes the place of an actual identity, then you’re effectively cutting that identity out of the narrative and you’re left with more stories of predominantly cis, straight, white men. It’s no surprise, then, that Marvel and other companies would see diversity as a way to entice new readers. That’s why, just a few short years before, long-standing characters like Wolverine and Thor stepped aside to allow their mantles to be adopted by women, or why the Hulk moniker was adopted by an Asian-American, or even why Ms. Marvel was suddenly the name of a Muslim girl from Jersey City (Aaron & Dauterman, 2014; Pak & Cho, 2015; Taylor, Lopez, and Navarrot, 2015; Wilson & Alphona, 2015). These changes matter and it was a big gamble that Marvel undertook to see if it amounted to sales. This is the reason for the retailer pushback, the anger at seeing female editors, and why comics were about to develop their own hate campaign.
ComicsGate
As Eric Francisco (2018) wrote:
“Unlike most “-gate” scandals, there wasn’t one thing that kicked off Comicsgate, a name attached organically and has trended throughout 2017. Unlike its ancestor Gamergate, the demands by Comicsgate are unclear. Sure, Gamergate began when a guy got mad at his ex, but it at least pretended to aspire to something bigger in its call for “ethics in gaming journalism.” Comicsgate, meanwhile, seems to just want less diversity, both in characters and creators, in an attempt to save comics and keep the medium white, male, and familiar. That’s it.
Comic sales have slowed, that much is true, especially compared to the early nineties when the speculator boom was at its highest. But book sales have slowed across the board, along with prose literature, in the face of changing media. But the profile for comics have never been higher, as mainstream pop culture is actually excited for a movie featuring Thanos and the Infinity Stones. Not only are the demands made by Comicsgate an offensive idea, they don’t make sense.
We’ve seen this before. It happened with video games and science-fiction literature. Despite the complicated origin story worthy of a supervillain, Comicsgate isn’t anything new. It’s little more than the latest irate gasp of fading white hegemony in geek culture.”
The notion that ComicsGate has no real ideology or demands is a little off. The truth is, nearly every participant will give different answers. The unifying factor, however, tends to be an emphasis on removing politics from the writing. At least, that’s what they claim. Comic creator Chuck Dixon, a ComicsGate supporter, went so far as to say he wanted to create an apolitical publisher and that he kept politics out of his personal work, but also made it clear he was going to be making comics for the political right (Gaudette, 2016). He effectively gives away the game. It’s not about comics being political. It’s about them not catering to their personal tastes. The real issue he is fighting is what he calls social justice warrior changes to the comic book canon. This is a loaded phrase. The oppositional stance they’ve taken is on social issues, which include race and gender. We’ve already covered how they reacted to gay characters, female legacy heroes, and even just female editors, but these same social issues are often adopted by the right wing as a part of what sociologist James Davison Hunter has described as the latest iteration of the culture wars (Stanton, 2021). It’s the same as GamerGate. Fighting for the removal of something they don’t like is really a way to demand a return to the status quo and ignoring the communities who have rarely had a presence in the industry.
This is not new. After World War II, there was a massive investment in education which led to a society more strongly tied to knowledge than theology (Stanton, 2021). This caused a cultural shift, one which continues to today. The rise of what James Davison Hunter described as “post-Enlightenment” culture and the way information is spread through universities caused a panic amongst those with far more conservative views. As he puts it:
“Conservatives see this as an existential threat. That’s an important phrase: They see it as an existential threat to their way of life, to the things that they hold sacred. So while the earlier culture war really was about secularization, and positions were tied to theologies and justified on the basis of theologies, that’s no longer the case. You rarely see people on the right rooting their positions within a biblical theology or ecclesiastical tradition. [Nowadays,] it is a position that is mainly rooted in fear of extinction (Stanton, 2021).”
“Fear of extinction” is a phrase that, in modern contexts, has morphed into its own conspiracy theory: The Great Replacement (“The great replacement”, n.d.). For years, many in the white supremacist movement pushed the narrative that non-white immigrants were being used to replace the native white Europeans or Americans. Popularized by French writer and critic Renaud Camus, the theory gained traction amongst groups already concerned with a coming white genocide. Since many white supremacists in America blame the Jews for a great deal of issues, including immigration, the theory quickly came to become shorthand for Jews replacing whites, which directly led to these white supremacists marching in Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally shouting “Jews will not replace us (Green, 2017).” All of this exists despite there being no real evidence of a replacement being perpetuated, a coming white extinction, or why it matters to begin with since race is a social construct (Schwartzburg, 2019; Gannon, 2016). Representation matters because we live in a society where whiteness and masculinity have become the default due to those in power largely being white and male. We acknowledge race because that’s how society has been structured even though there is no single genetic variance between people of different races. It seems reasonable to conclude that it is the loss of perceived power that these people are so concerned with. This is a particular fear for white nationalists because they’re aware on some level that the United States and other western countries created a power imbalance through colonialism. Without the exploitation of other populations and their resources, they wouldn’t have the affluence that they enjoy today. This fear, it seems, is a quiet admission of guilt.
With this in mind, the fear over a white genocide or replacement is placed into its proper context. It is about this power and springs largely from white nationalist propaganda. Unfortunately, the days of this theory being predominantly part of the white supremacist rhetoric are in the past. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, U.S. congressman Matt Gaetz, and even French fascist Marine Le Pen have all promoted the theory in one way or another (“The great replacement”, n.d.). The Great Replacement has moved into the mainstream, which means it has now been added to the culture war. The arguments for less diversity in comic books is just another extension of this.
As Liana Kerzner, creator of Lady Bits, a show about women in video games puts it:
“Comicsgate is the political culture war come to comic books. […] I know I’m supposed to be super-serious and sombre about this, but the whole thing is pointless on so many levels. Comic books are a relatively small industry, so readers personalize things to a degree that’s difficult for consumers of mainstream media to understand. Everyone who is a fan of comics has read a book that they felt was written just for them, and it’s like a drug (Jancelewicz, 2018).”
This addiction makes everything feel heightened to the base. Maintaining white, male characters is of the utmost importance in part because it’s protecting their drug of choice from change. The argument boils down to two things, the first being a fear of their straight, white, male characters being replaced. Whiteness and masculinity are how they define their identities and they feel attacked. The other argument is simply feeling betrayed that a beloved character or series has changed. These two feelings allow a wide group of people to come together in their anger at the institution causing these changes. A Wordpress site titled “This is Comicsgate,” which details individual accounts and their hateful rhetoric associated with the group, exhaustively details many examples of anger used for racist, transphobic, sexist, or just disrespectful means (This Is Comicsgate, n.d.). The anger and the use of that anger is the thread connecting them. ComicsGate may specifically mean white superheroes to some, but it could also just as easily mean poor storytelling or anti-gay sentiments to others.
Diversity and Comics
While it took a while for a movement to be fully established, ComicsGate attracted an eclectic crowd nearly from the start. It wasn’t just old white men joining the cause, either. Multi-ethnic, multi-religious groups of people fell under the CG umbrella. The lack of a defined ideology helped make this a reality since not wanting comics to change and believing the storytelling had grown too political were really the only two characteristics that needed to be filled. The politicization of modern storytelling is an interesting position to take considering this started around the same time as the rise of the alt-right, GamerGate’s push into far-right politics, and, of course, the Donald Trump presidency. At this point, it seemed, everything was political. It was all an extension of the culture war. It becomes even more laughable when a stroll through comic book history showcases Captain America punching Nazis before the United States ever joined the war, not to mention the barrage of anti-Hitler books that followed, or Marvel’s merry mutants fighting against a right-wing televangelist in a parallel to the struggle for civil rights (Fertig, 2017; Claremont & Anderson, 2011). It’s no secret that a majority of popular and enduring characters, and even the industry itself, came from Jewish creators who struggled to find lasting work elsewhere due to antisemitism (Buhle, 2008, p. 1-12). Comic books have a silly, but still firmly political origin.
This didn’t stop the movement, however, from gathering its own leaders that would continue to argue these takes ad nauseam, leading to the rise of Richard C. Meyer. As the Milkshake Incident caused an uproar on Twitter, Meyer was one of the loudest voices goading on the harassment (Elbein, 2018). The sudden flurry of attention swelled Meyer’s follower count, and, just like Mike Cernovich or Milo Yiannopolous before him, Meyer saw an opportunity to take advantage of the commotion while running the ironically named YouTube channel “Diversity & Comics”. He utilized this space to rant about everything he felt was wrong with mainstream, particularly superhero comics, which turns out to be a lot. As he said to the Daily Beast:
“I started noticing a lot more weird stuff. […] Feminization of men, masculinization of women, basically, all the classic heterosexual pairings being destroyed... you realize this is a trend, and you start wondering why they’re doing it. Why is Luke Cage, the quintessential blaxploitation tough guy, why is he pushing a baby carriage and he’s the wimpiest, most soft-spoken—this is not done on accident (Elbein, 2018).”
For him, the largest motivator was what he perceived as the decoupling of sex and gender for seemingly nefarious purposes. Women are only allowed to be seen as feminine and men could not take care of their children since that is a stereotypically female role. These are, to put it lightly, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic thoughts. These sentiments would seem right at home in 1950’s America, but the world has moved on. Those that refuse to change see this as a problem.
The anger at the characters was not the only thing on his mind, though, as Meyer continued:
“One of the things about SJWs is that they get a job because of surface qualities, being a woman, being black, being gay, being trans, and there’s no adjustment on the ground to negative fan reaction due to low sales (Elbein, 2018).”
As he demonstrates, the creators are part of what he has deemed wrong with modern comic book storytelling. On the subject of the Milkshake crew, he stated:
“They obviously seemed to not be qualified. They can’t spot basic typos, they can’t notice major plot holes, they antagonize the fans... I talk to all these people, actual, legitimate talents, who can’t get a job to save their lives. Meanwhile some airhead who calls the fans Nazis and turns out laughably bad work is getting Eisner awards (Elbein, 2018).”
The interesting thing to note here is that Meyer does not provide any evidence of lowered sales specific to these editors. If we wanted to be extremely generous and apply this statement to minority led books like Thor, featuring Jane Foster as the God of Thunder, we would see that it was outselling it’s previous title featuring the original Odinson (Hoffman, 2017). While some of the more diverse books sold less than their white, male counterparts, it wasn’t by a significant margin and those books were often canceled at the same rate as any other book that didn’t perform well enough. All this data simply implies that Marvel was trying new things and keeping the ones that work. This same strategy is what led Archie Comics to publishing horror books, emphasizing their diverse cast, and relaunching with a modern aesthetic in 2015 to immense success (McMillan, 2014; Polo, 2015).
Meyer’s anger at the lack of traditional gender roles and seeing women in leadership were just stepping stones for his rhetoric. It got much worse very soon after. He called famed author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates a “race hustler”, described trans writer Magdalene Visaggio as a “man in a wig” who was “mentally ill”, frequently only commented on the physical appearance of women he disagreed with, and referred to creators he didn’t like as “autistic retards” (Elbein, 2018). During the rise of GamerGate and the Alt-Right, this behavior was well established as the norm for hateful online discourse, and really only pushed Meyer further to the front of the pack. With his behavior incentivized, he pushed further. As reported by the Daily Beast:
“In a private YouTube video called “The Dark Roast,” originally posted in November 2017 and obtained by The Daily Beast, Meyer called one Marvel editor a “cum-dumpster,” accused various female writers of “sucking their way into the industry,” and mused which famous creators were pedophiles or had psychological problems. “The Dark Roast is where I get to say stuff like ‘Dan Slott looks like a pedophile,’” he says in the recording. “I don’t have to dance around, I don’t have to say ‘parody’ or wink-wink.”
“That was a private, letting-off-steam video,” Meyer told The Daily Beast, confirming the video’s authenticity. “Which had a disclaimer on it that it was for close friends only. I’m very disappointed whoever shared that with you broke that disclaimer and broke faith (Elbein, 2018).”
Meyer’s allusion to not needing to say wink-wink relates back to many of the online trolls who try to say the quiet part out loud. Saying awful things and then pretending it’s a joke is a proud tradition amongst the Alt-Right. The truth, though, is that this very specific rhetoric is what is used to instigate more harassment. Creators found that nearly anything they did, including just posting a picture of themselves, caused intense waves of personal attacks, but the majority happened just after Meyer would make a video about or engage with a creator on Twitter (Elbein, 2018). The exception to this rule would be the creators that are on his side and none were more willing to back him than Ethan Van Sciver.
Ethan Van Sciver
Most agree that Van Sciver and Meyer formed a two man act with Meyer taking the offense and Van Sciver both promoting these actions and deflecting criticism (Elbein, 2018). The two were seen as leaders of the movement with legions of followers stepping in to argue that those who were upset with their actions were either misled or intentionally misleading others. The newfound fame may have been an exciting aspect of continuing the harassment for Meyer, but Van Sciver made his name as a controversial figure even before ComicsGate. While still working as an artist for both Marvel and DC, he released a sketchbook with the character Sinestro on the cover and named it My Struggle as a play on Hitler’s famous book Mein Kampf. To Van Sciver, this was a silly joke, one that definitely could have and was received poorly as even his friends told him not to do it, but some fans took issue with this move. The real uproar and questions over exactly how tasteless the joke was didn’t really start, however, until after he became more involved in promoting ComicsGate. This is part of the overall playbook. Humor obfuscates intention and gives built in deniability to those perpetuating harm. While Van Sciver was most likely trying to have fun with the obvious Hitler allusions, he can deny any responsibility for the outcome or the hurt others felt. The same goes for when he interacts with a creator he disagrees with and his followers then harass them. As Rachael Krishna puts it:
“Ultimately, trying to separate what’s ironic, what’s genuine, and what’s merely a motif in Van Sciver’s art is emblematic of the ongoing chaos of Comicsgate (Krishna, 2018).”
For a long while, Van Sciver refused to acknowledge any affiliation with ComicsGate and, instead, claimed to be a victim of the culture war (Krishna, 2018). To him, the jokes were just jokes and if his followers were responsible for harassment then he couldn’t be held responsible because he didn’t directly send them to do so. Except he also didn’t really do much to end the harassment either. It’s been well documented how he would tell people he disagreed with to kill themselves and mock others relentlessly. In one breath Van Sciver would claim he was against bigotry in all forms and in the next claim that Donald Trump’s followers, including himself, were coming to clean up after the queer globalist mess- sending a clear message that “queerness” was part of the problem. If then his followers harassed queer fans or creators, Van Sciver felt that his hands were clean. This is perhaps exemplified best in his reaction to an article written specifically about this harassment:
“When asked about the behavior of his followers in instances like these, Van Sciver replied to The Daily Beast via email, ‘I think my fans are the best!!!! I always appreciate their support for me and for my art (Elbein, 2018).’”
As time went on and Van Sciver’s bullying behavior, his support for the ComicsGate movement, and his own trolling garnered an extreme amount of interest from all sides, his YouTube channel became another source for strange behavior (Elbein, 2018). While the constant barrage of anger would be enough, probably the most concerning action to spring from this was the early promotion of GamerGate supporter, Alt-Right activist, and Christian nationalist Vox Day (Elbein, 2018; Goforth, 2021).
Vox Day
Day is another player in this drama with a long history of courting controversy. Known for his support of the alt-right and outright bigoted views, such as claiming black men are “500 times more likely to possess a gene variant that is linked to violence and aggression than white American men,” his actions have led him to being banned from Twitter and many other social media sites (Goforth, 2021; Brown, 2018). His rhetoric may seem like he sits firmly on the side of white supremacists, and, to be clear, his actual words do support this, but Day claims not to fit into this category. His reasoning? He refuses the title “white supremacist,” not on ideological terms, but because he identifies as Native American and, as such, finds white supremacist to be offensive (Goforth, 2021). Christian nationalist will have to do. Not surprisingly, considering he wound up being affiliated with multiple hate campaigns, Day also has a history of issues with women. On the reasoning for opposing women’s right to vote he claimed, “they are significantly inclined to vote for whomever they would rather fuck (Goforth, 2021).” There seems to be no end to the contrarian point of view that he is willing to take. He’s even gone so far as to claim the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik was a hero for killing 77 people that he deemed future marxists (Day, 2017). Ultimately, it seems Day has little care for those that aren’t like him and outright anger at anyone he views as restricting his actions or worldview, despite most of the consequences he’s faced being due to his own vitriol. In other words, just like all of the early co-opters of GamerGate.
Fittingly, Day often comes up in conversation with Milo Yiannopoulos or Mike Cernovich, but unlike his compatriots, Day is more than willing to attack others on the right at nearly any time (Goforth, 2021). He’s even gone so far as to write a book criticizing Jordan Peterson, an extremely influential psychologist known for anti-trans and anti-feminist rhetoric (Day, 2018). This penchant for fighting with others is possibly what often puts him into trouble even within his own community. It didn’t take long for Vox, who was very supportive of the ComicsGate movement, to be ostracized and trashed even by Ethan Van Sciver who had helped to platform him to the comic book community.
Rabid Puppies
Before ComicsGate, though, Day took his GamerGate tactics to the Hugo awards (VanDerWerff, 2015). As nominations began for the literary award ceremony, many conservatives felt anger toward a slate of diverse stories. This led to a campaign known as the Sad Puppies, which decided to game the system and nominate what they viewed as classical science fiction and to promote politically conservative authors. Brad Torgersen, of the Sad Puppies, defended this by claiming those in charge of the Hugos were running a clique for liberal stances. He states:
"They don’t want the Hugos to be about 'popular' as much as they want the Hugos to be about 'important,' which is an entirely different mindset […] Especially when you have the arrival [in the last 10 years] of social justice agitators who are demanding that books and stories now be recognized and anointed due to the fact the author [or the characters] meet a given set of minority demographics (VanDerWerff, 2015).”
What Torgersen actually illustrates here is a tactic that’s used over and over again by agitators in every field. This has been seen through GamerGate, this has been seen in ComicsGate, and this is seen in the Sad Puppies campaign. Using politically radicalized language allows them to manipulate others into a block that can be pushed and pulled in whatever direction they deem fit (VanDerWerff, 2015). The implicit instructions are “if you support our cause, you will do what we say.” This served to, in their minds, showcase a plethora of conservative authors that aren’t getting noticed. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. In reality, John C. Wright received six separate nominations for his work, with one being disqualified later, meaning this push for diverse conservative authors coalesced more or less around one man. Hugo award winning author Abigail Nussbaum summarized it best by stating:
"If your argument is that there's a vibrant field of conservative (politically, stylistically, or both) SF being written that isn't being recognized by the Hugos, then the fact that fully one-third of the works of fiction you got onto the ballot are by the same person isn't a strong point in support of it (VanDerWerff, 2015).”
Complicating matters even more, the objection to Wright’s nominations also stem from some key skeletons hidden in his closet. While most have been removed, John C. Wright had authored several anti-gay posts and even called Nickelodeon’s The Legend of Korra a “sexual aberration (VanDerWerff, 2015).” To the Sad Puppies, his views should not be considered when discussing the merits of his work. There is some irony to this thinking as well. Since they were frequently criticized for their lack of diversity, the Sad Puppies also put a heavy emphasis on women, people of color, and LGBTQ writers while still focusing on conservative views and space-opera science fiction, effectively becoming the exact thing they campaigned against.
The Rabid Puppies campaign, however, never felt the need to expand their support to appeal to diversity (VanDerWerff, 2015). This is, in part, because the campaign was started by Vox Day, who wanted to platform the same type of creators, but instructed his followers to vote for the entire slate precisely as they are. This does away with the implicit instructions and makes the demands for his followers explicit. These authors were to be promoted and were not merely suggested. Some added controversy to all of this comes from Day’s use of this list to promote books from his own publishing house and even secure nominations for himself.
The pattern of taking a movement, specifically a political movement, and using this to his own advantage followed Day to ComicsGate and caused a myriad of issues.
EVS vs Vox Day
To understand how all of this came to be, it’s important to put the events in a somewhat natural order. Van Sciver brought Day onto his YouTube channel after noticing that he had created a comic book called Alt Hero, featuring a woman clad in the Confederate flag (Sciver, 2018). Day both argues that he did this to antagonize the SJWs and that the Confederate flag doesn’t stand for racism like they claim. To illustrate this he points to its use in other countries, which would be a valid point except when talking about American politics it is important to keep context. Other countries don’t always utilize the same symbology when adopting cultural points as their own. In many countries the flag does symbolize a type of rebellion. The difference, however, is that in America it became widely adopted by segregationists after there was a strong push for civil rights (Costa-Roberts, 2015). It’s origin is steeped in a fight for the slavery of black people and it’s modern popularity is attributed to opposing their rights. These are firmly in line with Day’s stances, but he couches the true history of these events behind false equivalencies. With his hero garbed in hate, he pushed forward with a crowdfunding campaign for the comic and received an immense amount of money, to which even Van Sciver pointed out a good chunk of which came from high dollar private donations, including from the model whose likeness was used for the main character as a marketing campaign (Sciver, 2018). It may seem odd that this very overtly political comic book caught Ethan Van Sciver’s attention in a way that he felt the need to interview the creator, but that’s only because Van Sciver’s own motivation is a bit shaky. In his own interview with Day, Van Sciver mentions that he wants to create apolitical comics, that he wants to annoy SJWs with his work, and that his own writing would be political. It makes sense when put into the context of just being fundamentally opposed to seeing liberal stories and diverse characters in mainstream comics. Their stance is formed entirely by opposition rather than firm ideology.
The interview itself is not much to comment on. The two creators have a polite, albeit tense, conversation since Van Sciver doesn’t seem to really agree with Day’s approach to comic books (Sciver, 2018). It is mainly interesting because either Van Sciver is unaware of Day’s long history of controversial behavior, even though he is a public figure and all of this is easily discoverable through a cursory glance at Google, or he just doesn’t care. It never comes up. They mostly disagree about exactly how political comic books should be, even though they both agree with the need to push back and defeat SJWs. The reaction to platforming Day, though, was a big deal and actually gave Van Sciver an automatic defense for pushback. Often, this video was claimed as Van Sciver’s secret plan to introduce a supposed white nationalist to his followers and get their support for these ideas. There is absolutely no evidence to support this, but what did occur is that Day suddenly found an audience more likely to support his comic book endeavors. Van Sciver gains the ability to claim victimhood since his motivation isn’t as clear as his accusers seem to make it and Vox Day gains an audience. Throughout their interview Day makes it very clear that publishing Alt-Right comic books was a strategic choice made to appeal to a different audience and to make more money. With that audience found, Day moved fully into ComicsGate the way he and others moved into GamerGate.
In September of 2018, just a year after the harassment took full swing, Vox Day announced a new comic book publishing imprint named ComicsGate (Trent, 2018a). The idea, it seems, was to push the envelope even further with a logo stating “100% SJW-FREE” and promising to only publish comic books brought to them by ComicsGate supporters. The logo sports a green and purple color scheme, which is a nod to Day’s GamerGate affiliation since the green and purple combination was adopted early on in the GamerGate movement, possibly as a reference to a 4Chan meme where a character from Dragon Ball Z rapes another character (Melendez, 2018). This comic imprint clearly had an adversarial approach. What they probably didn’t anticipate was the immense amount of pushback from the ComicsGate movement they chose to champion. Richard Meyer immediately disavowed this move, and Ethan Van Sciver went further, stating:
"VOX DAY tried to steal #ComicsGate. ComicsGate destroyed him tonight, live (Beschizza, 2018).”
The struggle for control of ComicsGate turned into what could be seen as an all out war between Ethan Van Sciver and Vox Day. What followed, however, involved a great deal more people and a struggle to define the term ComicsGate as legal battles began. Meyer and other creators associated with the ComicsGate movement had flocked to crowdfunding websites in order to raise funds for their projects. Some, including those created by Meyer, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and backers waited for years in some instances to get the books they helped to fund (Beschizza, 2018). Critics accused these creators of grifting money from their well-intentioned backers. It should be noted that the majority of these books did actually get printed, but the long delays and arrogant dismissals from Meyer cast a dark shadow on the ComicsGate movement at the time. Day’s new imprint could threaten this even more.
Just two days after announcing the ComicsGate imprint, Day responded to the backlash by trying to explain their intentions and lay some of the blame on Ethan Van Sciver’s supposed need to control the movement (Trent, 2018b). In fact, Day publically rescinded his offer to work with Van Sciver due to a threatened lawsuit. Supposedly, Van Sciver believed that since he ran a “Comicsgate Live” YouTube show, he would be entitled to trademarking the name (Johnston, 2020). Anger over this and the political nature of the books drove discourse further, and Day’s response to the complaints that his comic books were too political actually revealed some of the flawed logic in the movement itself. In his words:
“…comics have always had political and ideological elements to them; the core problem with what the SJWs are doing in comics is less about how they are inserting their lunatic politics into the comics and more about the way in which they are ideologically policing who is permitted to produce and publish comics at Marvel, DC, Image, IDW, and other comics publishers (Trent, 2018b).”
Day’s stance revealed that he believed conservatives and others with right leaning political views were barred from creating comics at the major publishers and this was partially why the books took what he deemed SJW stances. This exact mentality will be parroted by others in the movement further on, but it’s also important to note that during all of this time Ethan Van Sciver, a fervent supporter of Donald Trump and a hard conservative, was concurrently working on multiple DC titles like Green Lantern and Batman and had worked for Marvel on flagship titles like New X-Men in the past. Huge names like Chuck Dixon and Mike Baron, both conservative writers, helmed Batman and Punisher for years. While it’s true that these creators don’t get nearly as much work as they did in their heydays, it also happens to coincide with a new batch of writers becoming the “hit” makers of their time. These new writers became the darlings of the industry and so there happened to be less for those that weren’t in favor. Added on to this, abhorrent behavior like telling others to kill themselves or spouting conspiracy theories on social media gives the publishers an incentive to not hire what would be seen as liabilities. With the rise of GamerGate and the Alt-Right, these behaviors became far more common. Plenty of artists and writers made their names, but lost out on future jobs or even current jobs due to sneaking racist messages into their art or poor social media behavior such as attacking Marvel or DC for their perceived grievances. The question becomes “does Marvel or DC need to hire people who refuse to acknowledge their editorial direction?” The answer is clearly “no.” Chuck Dixon is a perfect example of a writer who made his name in the industry, but then did multiple interviews bashing both Marvel and DC before choosing to work for Vox Day, a hard-right Christian Nationalist who claims Black people are genetically inclined to be more violent, on titles based around the Q Anon conspiracy theory (Dixon, 2021). He is the definition of a liability to a company not looking to be associated with such behavior. That doesn’t mean that their plight is any less valid, but it does mean that they are not guaranteed a job.
The truth is, there’s a lot of work that can and should be done about how creators are treated at these companies. Millions, sometimes billions, of dollars are made by the publishers that don’t go to the people who made the characters or wrote the stories that were turned into record breaking movies. These creators should be compensated fairly, but, again, a job is not guaranteed to any creator that doesn’t sell well or has brought negative press due to their actions. If their personal life only affected them, like Professor Marston and his polyamorous relationship, this wouldn’t be an issue (Lenore, 2015). Doing public interviews where you claim Marvel and DC are intentionally sabotaging the industry is another thing entirely (Dixon, 2021). Essentially, what’s at issue here isn’t conservatism- it’s consequences for harming a brand or a person.
Regardless, this push has led many to decide that they would publish their own books and label them “ComicsGate” either with Vox Day’s imprint or without. Antonio J Malpica applied to register the term “Comics Gate” as a publishing trademark just days after Day’s own announcement (Johnston, 2020a). His lawyers argued that:
“'Comics Gate appearing in the mark means or signifies or is a term of art for The unity between consumers and creators that have been ostracized in the comic book industry due to their political beliefs and/or from expressing their desires to read A-political storytelling in comics for people of color, creed, nationality, gender, identity, and people from all walks of life. in the relevant trade or industry or as used in connection with the goods/services/collective membership organization listed in the application (Johnston, 2020a).”
The same argument pops up here about creators who were ostracized for their political beliefs. The beliefs never get fully detailed, and it’s no wonder considering the majority of these beliefs spring from not wanting to see women or people of color helming titles once held by white men. Without opposition, though, this application was approved and the trademark was provisionally granted (Johnston, 2020a). By March of 2020, however, the United States government marked the application as “abandoned because no Statement of Use or Extension Request timely filed after Notice of Allowance was issued.” Essentially, they did not use the trademark, prove they were going to use the trademark, or file an extension to prepare for use of the trademark. But this is where it gets a bit tricky.
Trademarks
Preston Poulter, an outspoken critic of the movement who regularly runs YouTube videos covering “Last Week in Comicsgate”, filed for use of the term under one word (Johnston, 2020a). Speaking to Bleeding Cool, Poulter stated:
"I registered Comicsgate, one word. As I publish comic books, it won't be hard to [publish] a book that uses the trademark, which no one else has done to date. I will establish criteria over who can use the trademark that will forbid engaging in online harassment, the doxxing of customers, or failure to fulfill in a timely fashion (Johnston, 2020a).”
Essentially, Poulter decided to troll the entire movement. The unfortunate side effect to this would be setting himself up in direct opposition to ComicsGate, which has shown itself to be quick to harass. This led to some explicit videos between Poulter and his ex wife featuring kink play to be found and distributed by the ComicsGate community, and Ethan Van Sciver in particular (Poulter, 2020a). Van Sciver took the opportunity to share these videos and to mock Poulter for his role in them even after the police were asked to investigate this as a case of revenge porn (Poulter, 2020b). Information regarding this is very scarce, but it is very likely that the charge for revenge porn may never come as there are questions as to whether this label could apply. The use of personal attacks against someone’s sexuality and private life, however, never ceased and it stands as a symbol of the appalling behavior of the community asking for acceptance.
Poulter doubled down, though, and added a registration for Comicsgate as a “certification mark”, essentially stating he would need to approve books to be labeled as “Comicsgate” (Johnston, 2020b). Around the same time, the abandoned trademark for “Comics Gate” was revived by Antonio Malpica with an extension granted by the U.S. Government. Then, Antony Romano filed for a trademark for “Comicsgate Comics”, which coincides with Romano’s LLC of the same name. Three different men staked their claim to the ownership of the name creating both confusion and anger for those invested in the matter. Even worse, Poulter accused Malpica of fraud, claiming that the declaration of use for the Comics Gate mark in commerce didn’t actually happen until after filing for an extension(Johnston, 2020c). These cases are, as of this writing, still under review, but that’s not the end of the complicated legal battles tied up in ComicsGate. There’s plenty to dive into, including swatting accusations, supposed left-wing agents within ComicsGate, and a response from Marvel.
