The Four Color Media Monitor

The Dangerous website gives word of Jon Malin, an artist at Marvel who's come to protest the social justice invasion of comicdom:

Progressives have staked major claims in the comic book industry, releasing dozens of storylines with feminist and other social justice themes across Marvel Comics’ lineup. Now, there’s a backlash.

Following DC Comics artist Ethan van Sciver’s brush with social justice warriors who vandalized a comic-themed pizza restaurant late last year, a Marvel artist, Jon Malin, is now speaking out against social justice warriors—an act that has earned him calls for Marvel to fire him.

And if they're smart, they'll avoid doing anything of the sort. They've bled sales badly thanks to their SJW shove down the throat, and dismissing/blacklisting him wouldn't improve their fortunes one bit.

Despite stirring the hornet’s nest, Malin refused to back down from his position and did not offer any apology for being politically incorrect. Instead, the artist wrote that he was glad to shed light on progressives who are attempting to stifle creativity in the comic book industry.

And again, let's remember DC is just as guilty, even if their writers usually hold their cards closer to their chests when it comes to social media exchanges. In fact, Dan DiDio and company's startlingly nasty treatment of Chuck Dixon's creation for the Batbooks, Spoiler/Stephanie Brown could very easily count, with the most chilling part of all being that another conservative - Bill Willingham - took the assignment without reservations to put Steph to death in 2004 in the horrible War Games crossover, and compounded the errors further the following year by "revealing" Dr. Leslie Thompkins killed Steph to teach Batman a lesson! If you're looking for a "right-wing" writer who's done little to earn respect of the conservative camp, Willingham would surely be it. To my knowledge, he didn't even come to Dixon's defense after he was largely blacklisted either.

And what led to a SJW takeover of comicdom? The simple answer is their ghettoization in the early to mid-90s. They stopped selling pamphlets in standard bookstores for many years, and when they started coming back, their writing quality had deteriorated so badly, and prices rose so steeply, it's no wonder few wanted to buy them, politics or no politics. Yet the ghetto mentality stuck hard enough that ultra-leftism and social justice became more and more prevalent, and Joe Quesada had already sown the seeds early in his tenure as Marvel's EIC. One example was banning the depiction of smoking, even if it were depicted negatively, and Brian Bendis was the only one allowed free rein either way. I don't think it's changed much since. Quesada's stances on the depiction of sex in comics was also hypocritical, and when Spider-Man's Sins Past fiasco came out, one of the defenses it was said he made for the finished product was that Peter Parker should not have had sex with Gwen Stacy and born kids with her, because it would "age" the character, so the supposed children were instead fathered by Norman Osborn. It was all totally pathetic, and recalling that it took place at the time Marvel was boomeranging back to crossovers like Avengers: Disassembled and House of M, you could easily say J. Michael Straczynski's story was already a definite bad end to a very wobbly run.

Malin deserves some credit for speaking up. It's just a pity he's illustrating a book starring one of the most weakly developed characters for the X-universe, Cable, if only because I realize there's every chance the quality of writing for Nathan Summers hasn't improved, though it's probably better than Gambit's received, even today (if Remy LeBeau's still depicted as a thief in the bad sense, that should say something). I think what Malin could do now is campaign for a lifting of the blacklist against Chuck Dixon, and de-canonizing the worst of Marvel's storytelling over the past two decades, if that could help lead them to improving their artistic fortunes.

Update: as crummy a site as Polygon can be, they did reach out to Malin and publish some vital statements he's made:

The intent is to point out a largely loud and growing group on the far left who are commonly referred to as Social Justice Warriors or SJWs, the most extreme commonly support/use or are apart of fascist socialist/ communist/ anarchist groups like ANTIFA(Yes, the “anti Fascists”) and BAMN(By Any Means Necessary) that have been attacking moderates and conservatives. Nazis and SJWs are both ideologically driven, intent on silencing speech, SJWs continually call anyone that disagrees with them “Nazi’s, racist, sexist, homophobes” and advocate punching anyone the deem a “Nazi”, even the most rational of people like Ben Shapiro(Jewish) who is no threat but offers his opposing views freely. SJWs have been and continue to single out a group in the population by race, gender and sexual preference(despite this going against the very things they claim they stand for) primarily Straight White Men to openly bash and blame as the cause of societies ills much like Hitler did with the Jewish population.

I made this comparison the best I could in 240 characters on Twitter when asked if the X-Men were SJWs. I said Nazi’s were SJWs(using the SJW term they use so often against innocent people-- against them) and the firestorm went off.

And also:

The nest of vipers comment refers to how these people have entered my industry which has been inclusive and diverse for decades and are nearly killing it. Comic shops are closing all over, sales are down because fans are tired of hearing from the creators and editorial Social Media feeds that that they are racist,sexist, homophobes, the comics have become openly politically SJW agenda driven including anti white/Trump and oddly enough people don’t want to read it and they don’t want their kids to either. As a creative endeavor we are being crippled by their influence, told to cover up women, not to let whites have dread locks because it is cultural appropriation... It doesn’t just stop there, the SJWs in the industry have openly said that “Make no mistake. Even if Trump loses, we will remember who supported him”(Name withheld), this is from an editor at the big 2 that is able to hire and fire and feels comfortable enough to openly discriminate against artists and writers and others that work freelance to create comics like myself. The same type of environment that encourages an X-Men artist named Ardian Syaf to hide anti christian/jewish messages in his X-Men book because the message is that it’s okay to discriminate as long as your on the right side of the political lines. And it goes on and on. we’re having to hide any views that might out some as even center left politically. They openly have tweeted against whites, men and have attacked the fan base calling them Nazi’s, told them to stop buying “their” books absolutely shredding the fan base. My fears are that this becomes something larger as this sterilization continues to sweep across arts and entertainment media and into public opinion. One voice. One correct answer.

It probably already has, recalling the recent Star Trek movie remakes overseen by J.J. Abrams suffered from some political correctness. In fact, even a remake of Shaft from the early 2000s did. It should be no surprise the Hollywood box office has been at all time lows in the past several years, and even Steven Spielberg can no longer salvage it.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful writers, good artists, good writers, marvel comics, politics