For those who haven’t been following the latest front of the ongoing culture wars, Comicsgate is, well, exactly what it sounds like: Gamergate but comics. In 2014, the Washington Post described Gamergate as “a proxy war for a greater cultural battle over who belongs to the mainstream”, and that description, four years later, remains perfectly adequate to describe its comics iteration.

Many will tell you that the movement began with the 2017 rise of Richard C Meyer, a Twitter user who amassed a platform largely based on denouncement, derision and disrespect of marginalised industry professionals, as well as their advocates – typically by co-opting marginalised rhetoric to reposition himself and others like him as victims.

Merely combatting or undoing Comicsgate, Brexit, and the flourishing of American fascism is not enough



“The issue with trans [people],” Meyer said in April to the Daily Beast, “is that I believe there’s people who have basically weaponised their status and they’ve been put to this gatekeeper position because they’re unassailable because of their trans status.” Of course, months earlier, Meyer and his thousands of followers had made it their mission to virulently misgender and personally insult trans creators and critics on the grounds of their being trans.

It’s a boring but familiar tactic, one that draws a through-line from the relatively small western comics industry to the national and international stage. The results of both the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election relied heavily (if not, solely) on the narrative of white loss and the tears of the white working class – while conveniently eliding the needs of working-class people of colour and what they stood to lose.

How can such events be combated? How can they be undone? But these are the wrong questions. Merely combating or undoing Comicsgate, Brexit, and the flourishing of American fascism is not enough.

A shutdown of Meyer’s Twitter account – and the account of his accomplice, former DC Comics artist Ethan Van Sciver – would not prevent some new equivalent arising in their stead any more than either a soft Brexit or an outright cancellation would prevent some new iteration taking its place. It is all well and good to impeach (and imprison) Donald Trump, but his mere removal from office would not dismantle that which allowed him to exist. We must ask how we undo or outright destroy the conditions that permitted these outcomes in the first place; we must ask and subsequently address how we arrived here.

While Comicsgate in its current form may be attributed to Meyer and Van Sciver, the movement has largely been given leave to exist for years by the very same people who have seen fit to decry its actions in recent weeks. Despite what the latest flood of Twitter statements from white male comics creators would have you believe, when it comes to issues of marginalisation, their preferred tactic is silence, and a hope that this will all just blow over.

Marginalised readers, critics and creators have made painstaking efforts to highlight the disrespect they receive both on the page and off it, but so long as a white male comic creator is at fault, the rest of their peers have nothing to say. In my personal experience, carefully remarking on the anti-black themes of a comic by two rather prolific white comics creators will land you: (1) three days of nonstop Twitter harassment, (2) some odd mix of aggression and passive-aggression from one of the creators himself, and (3) the fascinating absence of comment and utter dismissal as a cog in the “outrage machine” from the same people who would like to tell you today that black people are welcome in comics.

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That was July 2015, two years before most people had heard of Meyer and three before most comics creators had anything to say about the mistreatment of marginalised people. Rather than rejecting racism, misogyny, queerphobia, transphobia, or ableism outright, creators and editors simply shrug or, at best, claim that these issues are being handled in private – and indicate to the wider public in the process that racism, misogyny and the like absolutely will be tolerated.

Until they and other industry personnel take a zero-tolerance approach to abuses of power from within their own houses, Comicsgate will never truly die. Brexit and Trump are no different. The passivity of well-meaning white Britons and white Americans with regards to racism and xenophobia in their everyday lives indicated to a less-savoury segment of the population that their aggression would go unchecked.

If you want to prevent the next Comicsgate, Brexit or Trump, here are some suggestions: rather than claiming you support marginalised people, rather than stating that you are against the principles of a nebulous enemy, demand better of your peers, demand better of yourself, and demand it in public. Amplify the voices of marginalised people discussing issues within your community. Intercede when a peer is responding in a hostile fashion towards those discussions. Set a standard for public and communal discourse. Do not tolerate the dismissal or disrespect of your marginalised colleagues. Do not tolerate the dismissal or disrespect of marginalised strangers. And in every environment, no matter how uncomfortable: hold the line.

• JA Micheline is a freelance writer of prose, comics, and criticism



