Fighting for Diversity in Comics

Since my New Year’s Resolution for the comic industry was to embrace diversity — formats, audiences, preferences, and all kinds of differences — I was thrilled to see Andrew Wheeler’s diversity resolutions for superhero comics. It’s a good column that captures how far we’ve come in some areas and yet how very far we have to go. Anyone tracking the issue won’t be surprised at the requests — more women of color, LGBT characters, LGBT love stories, women-focused stories, female-lead movies, and fewer stereotypical characters, scantily clad women, and straight white men (of which we have plenty).

I do wonder about the intended audience of this piece. Those who appreciate the concerns already know the problems, while it will make the head blow off of those who tend to overreact to requests for inclusion, putting it all in one place. (A brief scan of the comments didn’t reveal too much cluelessness on display, though.) I also wish that the “more creators” request wasn’t last on the list, when all the other comments were about characters. We won’t get the latter without the former.



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