The Four Color Media Monitor

I discovered an article on Ebony from 2016 where a writer was pushing the aggravatingly woke propaganda that it should be black women who should write a character like Riri Williams, who was only created in the pages of Iron Man for diversity-pandering at the time, and even pushed the bizarre perception the mainstream industry's literally not open to black women. I don't think I'd ever written about this item before, so I guess I'll take a look at it now, if only to make a point why it's monumentally dated in its "argument":

I was 19 when I bought my first comic book. I had always loved them from afar—comics were the modern day Greek mythology, and superheroes were the gods that I wanted to hear about, time and time again. The most popular superheroes are household names—Superman, Batman, Captain America—and are supposed to represent our best selves. They inspire us to what we can be.

It took me until I was 19 to gather the courage to enter the comic books shop and purchase a physical copy of my own because of one vital fact: The comics industry is not an accepting place for Black girls and women. In fact, when you’re a young Black girl, there’s a very small list of heroes we can claim as our own, as one of us.

It's been years since this was written, but curious how the article made no mention of Storm from X-Men, or even Misty Knight, the lady with the bionic arm provided her by Tony Stark in the mid-1970s when she premiered, and I can't help but wonder if any omission of them from the article was deliberate, and possibly coming from somebody who, despite her claim to the contrary, isn't the avid comics reader she claims to be, and maybe she only began reading a decade ago. What good is that if the history she's gathered is only of recent? Also unmentioned is the 2nd Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and even civilian characters like Glory Grant can count. What's interesting about this puff piece though, is that the writer doesn't seem to like Brian Bendis, his leftism notwithstanding:

When Marvel announced their latest superhero was going to be a 15-year-old Black girl named Riri Williams, I wanted to be excited. And I was. But after learning more about her and the people who would be guiding her to the forefront, my excitement quickly turned into sadness and frustration.

Riri’s announcement into the world concerned me. This 15-year-old was being heralded “a woman” in mainstream write-ups popping up online, adding to the all-too-real issues of hypersexualizing Black girls. But what was even more disturbing was learning about the creative team behind her. Led by writer Brian Michael Bendis, not one of the people responsible for bringing RiRi to life was Black women.

This is, perhaps, most troubling because there’s a chance that Riri Williams could fall short because of the lack of Black women playing a vital role in her creation, which could limit the authenticity of the character. Without allowing someone who has the experience of being a young Black girl helping to shape this character, Riri may fall flat, or worse, become little more than a caricature of the stereotypes that already surround Black women and girls.

Now it's most intriguing that, despite Bendis being quite a PC panderer himself - and he certainly went the woke route in the past decade - the columnist doesn't seem to find him appealing. Which could just go to show that, no matter how PC he tends to be, other social justice advocates still won't consider him worthy of praise. That said, Bendis was and still is a horrible scriptwriter, and that he got as far as he did, despite having such a bottom of the barrel resume, is lugubrious.

That said, the columnist was regrettably demanding the legitimization of "purse puppies", or quite possibly sensitivity readers, which became a sad staple of the PC era of the past decade. Perpetuating a bizarre notion that a white doesn't know anything about how to script a black character, this despite all the past writers of the past century who did. And whether Riri was characterized as under 16 at the time, "hypersexualization" is apparently the biggest concern, not jarring violence. Interesting how this was written as merely an issue involving racial backgrounds, because in the past decade alone, there was only so much assault on girls' sexuality no matter the background. Was the character of Riri really even described literally as a woman in the past decade? Why do I get the vibe it was a huge exaggeration?

Black women may be underrepresented in the creation of mainstream comics, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t here. From comic book store owner Arielle Johnson to actress Amandla Stenberg and artist Afua Richardson, Black women are a vital part of comic book and nerd culture at large. But while the number of Black women creating the art we want to see is growing, there is still a large disparity in editorial and other managerial roles at major publishers, which could create an even bigger impact for our representation.

Jaime Broadnax, creator and managing editor of Black Girl Nerds, has been critical of mainstream comic book publishers, like Marvel, because of their lack of Black women creatives.

“What is most important is that we give opportunities to more writers to have a seat at the table. Marvel’s history with hiring Black women writers is very poor, and with so many Black women writers as well as artists currently making their own comics it’s pretty bad when you elect to overlook so many of them,” she told EBONY.com. “Riri is also a 15-year-old girl, so there’s a lot of context with being and seeing the world through the eyes of a 15-year-old Black girl that a middle aged white man just wouldn’t understand. Fans have also criticized Bendis for ignoring them when they have legitimate concerns on how he writes characters of color, notably [Spider-Man] Miles Morales.”

And why exactly is it such a big deal to work for Marvel or even DC, yet no worries to be found regarding story merit? All that aside, it's worth considering that just like white women, if black women feel there's not enough money to make in comics production, they may simply not care to seek jobs in the industry when technology proper could offer only so much more. But again, isn't that amazing how despite all his own woke pandering, certain "fans" dislike Bendis, not because he even disrespected Stan Lee's own creations with stories like Avengers: Disassembled and House of M, but because of how he allegedly writes characters of specific racial backgrounds. Also note the "ghettoized" viewpoint hauled into the mess, where we're told a white man, no matter his background, couldn't comprehend anything about black girls. Ahem. What about white women, no matter their background? Do they also fail to grasp anything specific about black women? Is it virtually impossible to do research on their own? Most black girls are little different from white girls in what hobbies they could enjoy, along with topics like fashion, and something tells me the writers of this puff piece don't actually appreciate any of that. One of the worst takeaways from this article is that it's also hurtful to Stan Lee, after all the hard work he did in his time focusing on race relations in the comics Marvel turned out in the Silver/Bronze Age. There's a white man who, in sharp contrast to Bendis, did far more in his time to oversee talented storytelling, and this puff piece insulted him just 2 years before he passed on.

As Broadnax pointed out, it’s important for both fans and creators to speak up about why Black women and girls need to tell their own stories in comics, and that currently, that isn’t happening with the big two, Marvel and DC Comics. To date, only one Black woman—Felicia D. Henderson—has ever been employed as a writer for a major comic book publisher, and that was for DC Comics back in 2009 and 2011. Henderson worked as a freelancer, not a full-time writer, for the company that produced Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Marvel, so far, has never hired a Black woman writer to lead a title, something Broadnax found troubling.

The comics industry has a problem with acknowledging the importance of having Black women present as writers and editors, or as an integral part of the industry in general. So instead, we have Black women taking things into their own hands by being vocal on social media and creating their own webcomics or indie creations without the help of mainstream backers.

Seriously, if you need to tell your own stories, then you don't act like Marvel/DC are literally the sole places where it can be done, and you don't ask for the aid of anybody you think isn't helping your cause. So the black women who produced their own comics were doing the right thing. But the lack of acknowledgement why merit matters is telling, and today, this puff piece is more dated than ever, as what's told at the end makes clear:

Tee Franklin, better known as MizCaramelVixen on Twitter, is working to bring more diversity and awareness to the field. In addition to lauching her site VixenVarsity, Franklin has gone on to kickstart other initiatives, like #BlackComicsMonth and writing her own title, to make the community more inclusive.

On Twitter, she went on to share her own apprehension about Riri Wiliams, especially when there’s still so much work to do with ensuring that Black women’s voices are heard.

Despite my concerns, there’s no doubt Riri Williams is important. She represents the bright future we have both in the comics industry and everywhere else. However, Black girls and women have a disturbingly low number of role models to look up to within the subculture, and by publishing of this story without the input of Black female creatives, publishers are in danger of insinuating Black girls and women aren’t good enough to control their own narratives.

We all deserve to have our stories told. But more importantly, we deserve to be the ones creating them in the first place. As Riri Williams continues to grow, hopefully her success will open up doors for Black women writers, editors, and illustrators at the Big Two, and other mainstream houses in the industry. After all, we deserve the chance to fly with the rest of the superheroes we love.

What's laughable is that, despite the notes on black women developing their own comics, all the writer truly cares about is Marvel/DC. Also fascinating how she doesn't seem the least bit disappointed by how under Axel Alonso, Tony Stark was not just kicked to the curb at one point, his background was forcibly rewritten so that his biological parents were adoptive foster guardians instead, and all of a sudden, he even has a stepbrother named Arno. To date, it doesn't look like even under C.B. Cebulski that's ever been repaired, yet when it became apparent it wasn't working, so they went for the next cheap trick, which was diversity replacement, pushing an established white character out of his armor for the sake of a girl whose promotion wasn't based on writing merit. Also, I wouldn't be shocked if it turns out the whole notion Marvel/DC never employed a black woman on a regular basis was a huge exaggeration. Let's also not forget all the Black ladies in mainstream comicdom the writer omitted, including Storm, Vixen, and again, we could surely add civilian co-stars like Glory Grant from Spider-Man, and Black Lightning's ex-wife Lynne Stewart-Pierce, to the subject to point out how there's only so many Black women in these fictional universes who were left out for the sake of inflating an absurd narrative that, as a result, runs the gauntlet of victimology.

Today, less than a decade after all this, while the Riri character may still be around in comics, all because woke pandering dictates they cannot even quietly phase out a character based on how she was created to start with, none of these same SJWs ever talk about her anymore, if at all. It doesn't even matter to them that her codename may have been changed to Ironheart, yet lack of merit continues to scuttle any chance for success, as does woke pandering in an adaptation. They don't even talk about what a shame it was that Riri never made the waves of stratospheric success they so much wanted her to make, never gathered any kind of huge audience, nor do they lament how she wasn't created to stand on her own like the Falcon and Luke Cage did when they were created in 1969 and 1972, and as a result, lacked her own agency as a newer creation. Which is surely to be expected when nobody on the left wants to explore serious issues of the times, in sci-fi terms or otherwise. I don't think the writer actually loves these superhero comics save for the sake of exploiting them for political points that don't add up to anything. There's no mention of why merit is vital for success, and if any of these mainstream or independent comics aren't being developed based on merit, can you truly expect to get ahead? Of course not.

Labels: history, Iron Man, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics