talking to myself, diversity & comics
-What’s the goal? Why does it matter?
-Gotta define it to explain it. So: my working definition of what it means to introduce (or elevate, or support, or whatever whatever, the verb varies with context) diversity to comics is having a wealth of storytellers of various backgrounds working in an industry that is telling a wide variety of stories.
-Diversity cannot be a code word for “stories written by or about everyone but white dudes.” “Diverse writers/artists” is a dog whistle. Better to say exactly what you mean.
-Diversity cannot be a marketing buzz word, because diversity is more normal than the lack of it.
-How can you effectively introduce diversity to an industry that has indulged in decades of the same things?
-“If you build it, they will come,” only goes so far. “If you build it, and put it in front of people who are open to it, they will come” tends to be more accurate.
-So who do you have to convince? The same people buying comics.
-It’s not that simple. Comics has a lot of middlemen.
-The mainstream structure: creators work through publishers who list through Diamond or another distributor to sell to retailers who then sell to customers.
-Another structure: creators work on their own and sell directly to retailers (consignment)
-Another other structure: creators work on their own and sell directly to readers (Gumroad, Patreon, Kickstarter, etc)
-The only thing that’s consistent is the creator and reader, but that relationship is both the toughest row to hoe and the easiest. If you aren’t plugged in, you won’t know that you can hit up X’s Gumroad, or maybe even that X exists. If you are plugged in, kicking someone three dollars via Paypal is nothing.
-Then, theoretically, the parties to be convinced: publishers and retailers, two (generally) for-profit enterprises. Creators gotta make a profit, too, but creators do what creators do. You go to creators to see their work, you go to publishers to see a variety of works, and you go to retailers to see an even greater variety of works.
-Publishers have to make a profit to keep books on the shelves. Retailers have to make a profit for the same. So the diversity conversation, by its very nature as a change in the industry, has to take into account economics and capitalism in addition to everything else.
-So for diversity in comics to work, it needs to be either a parallel system to what we have, or integrated into what we have in a way that makes money for the creators, publishers, and retailers.
-The domination of Marvel and DC in the mainstream comics industry warps the conversation. They dominate both the idea of comics and the business of comics, and they largely publish comics in one big genre: superheroes.
-Superheroes, at this point, often hinge on legacy and longevity. New capes have trouble taking off, old capes are always going to be the “real” ones to a certain subset of fans, and making your new capes differently colored often leads to a situation where your new character ends up making way for the old character when they have to come back—often demonstrating the implicit superiority of a white character.
-I don’t know how to square this circle. I don’t know how to measure the strides from those companies in any real way. Table it. Someone else can solve it.
-Publishers and retailers, turning a profit. The dominant route now is old faces writing new types. That covers representation on the page, but not behind it.
-True diversity isn’t me figuring out what you are and writing about it, no matter how deft or resonant my take is. True diversity is me getting to do you and you getting to do you and both of us being treated the same.
-How do you get diversity behind the page? You need creators that publishers trust to either turn a profit or fill some other need, and you need creators that retailers trust to not leave them with eighty copies sitting in the back room.
-Without diversity behind the page, you’re left with a group of people who have never experienced X playing on the lived experiences of people who have for the profit of themselves or someone else. That warps perception. So it is fine to an extent, but it isn’t good enough in the long-term.
-So you need a diverse group of people sitting behind the art boards, too.
-How do you do that in an industry that’s used to a specific type of comic?
-YA and the book market appear to be doing gangbusters when it comes to welcoming other voices, at least from the outside looking in.
-What’s the difference? Different publishers, different stores, different target audiences.
-I’m part of this industry. I’ve been reading comics from it since I was a kid. I’m not trying to hear that it’s a lost cause. But at the same time, you gotta meet people where they live if you expect anything to work.
-Bite your tongue and table the frustration: a parallel structure. But is that separate but equal? “We can sell black comics here, but not here?” Does that matter, as long as they sell?
-What is the goal? Is it to change an industry and bring everyone along, or to do what needs to be done and what happens, happens?
-Progress is incremental, happening in fits and starts that are then heralded as basically the Second Coming or the first foot touching ground off the first boat at Normandy. John the Baptists like to throw all their eggs in one basket, making characters into de facto exemplars for their culture, even though literally no one in real life is that.
-Diversity’s gotta include the good and the bad, otherwise what’s even the point? But, as an example, white people don’t go “Oh, I hope this guy’s not white” when they hear about crime on the news.
-Stereotypes and negative perceptions are a real problem, and that’s hard to address when you have a max of two black characters in your story. There are more black exemplars in comics than I’ve met in my whole life and I’m pretty sure I’ve been black for most of it.
-So to have the good and the bad, you need a lot of both, that way no one character has to shoulder the burdens of an entire group of people. A groundswell.
-And again: how do you make that happen? Inching along won’t make it happen, because nobody wants to be the first to bust out a high-profile black criminal character.
-Drifting into story issues that are best left to storytellers. Rein it back in: comics gotta sell and be printed, so how do you convince retailers and publishers to back you?
-A break-out hit can spark a fad, but fads don’t guarantee a transformation into the New Normal. Then you’re just an outlier, an Exceptional Negro, so to speak.
-A wealth of work can show and prove, but getting a wealth of work out there in front of the people who want or need it isn’t as easy as just willing it to be so.
-So maybe vast and sweeping immediate change isn’t feasible. Then what?
-Is it an investment in the future? “If you build it, the next generation will fix your ramshackle construction and make it into something real?”
-If that’s it, how do you shore up that foundation?
-If you have hiring power, you can make it a focus. Rooney Rule it.
-If you don’t have hiring power…I come back around to “If you build it, and tell people about it.” So that’s marketing, messaging.
-Which brings me back to Marvel & DC, and to a lesser extent “nerd culture.” How do you stand out in a flood? Existing isn’t enough.
-I dunno. Marvel and DC’s gravity is enormous. Reach outside the current target audience toward people who don’t care about the minutia of nerd culture?
-Is that separate-but-equal again or just basic business? Isn’t it a matter of selling to people who aren’t interested vs selling to people who might be interested?
-So, new audience: how do you effectively reach them?
-But: to stick to the comics industry we have, a push for diversity has to result in something that makes money for the middlemen and supports the creators.
-Arguments for diversity have to take into account more than just representation, because focusing on representation alone can easily result in a third-party shucking and jiving on my account. “Yessuh, massa! Them po-lice shol is bad! Ayuk!”
-Accordingly, diversity has to allow for people to tell their own stories in addition to their stories being told by others. It’s a balance thing, not a “only black people can talk about black stuff” thing.
-You need people behind the scenes working, finding the creators for the job, pushing them the way they deserve to be pushed. You need to make the economics work. You need to make sure people know about it.
-You spread the word by sharing your platform and bigging others up as best you can. You pray that what you’re saying strikes someone who needs to see it, or is the millionth straw that breaks the camel’s back for someone with power.
-So I guess I need to be patient? Bleah.
-I forgot to explain why it matters. I take it as read, and need to do better there.
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