comic book fans im going to hold all of our hands here when i say this but you need to acknowledge the racism of a run when you talk about it even though its really uncomfortable. honestly you don’t even need to earnestly condemn it (though you SHOULD) but the bare minimum is you have to acknowledge it exists in a run and tell people about it when you talk about it.
by glossing over racism until the surface is smooth, you are setting every other reader up for nasty surprises because new readers will not know it is there. this is the basic concept of trigger warnings. everyone finds racism too uncomfortable to mention, probably because people have a difficult time admitting that they enjoyed something that contains overt racism, so they’d rather just pretend it doesn’t exist.
i cannot count the number of times ive cracked open a run for the first time that everyone raves about thinking i know what happens only to be smacked in the face by an absurd, stomach-turning racial caricature. and i’m a dedicated comic reader! as a community by failing to warn new readers about racism in our storylines, it contributes to making comic spaces less diverse because people who are curious about a run are much more likely to be turned off by suddenly confronting something triggering without warning and guess who is more likely to find that shit triggering because its not white people!
just fucking acknowledge it! talk about it! bare minimum, and it’s gross to even have to say it!
