No, we don’t need #ComicsGate

Today, I saw an interesting article over at Salon, titled “The new Gamergate: Angry white men are trying to shut down diverse comics.” In the article, Matt Binder takes down an article written on Breitbart.com by “journalist”/professional misogynist Milo Yiannopoulos. See, Milo is all pissed because Marvel has reimagined Thor as a woman.

This proves that Milo hasn’t actually read Jason Aaron’s excellent Thor comic. Because you see, there is no reimagining. Thor has not switched genders, he somehow became no longer worthy of lifting Mjolnir after something Nick Fury whispered to him during the Original Sin crossover (what Fury whispered still hasn’t been revealed).

Mjolnir was picked up by a woman, who the hammer deemed worthy and granted her the power of Thor. And then when the real Thor saw what kind of person she was and fully worthy of wielding the hammer, he gave her his blessing to use his name.

There hasn’t been any reimagining. There hasn’t been any gender-swapping. Male Thor is in fact still a major presence in the book. In fact, a recent issue featured him more than Mjolnir’s new bearer.

Milo would know this, if he had read Thor. Clearly he has not. But still, he bemoans the destruction of a cherished artform.

It should be noted that Milo was once extremely dismissive of gamers. But then once the misogynists who make up GamerGate came along, Milo saw an opportunity to spew his particular brand of vile. So all of a sudden, Milo went from mocking gamers to praising them for standing up to the dreaded feminists and “social justice warriors” who are totally ruining things for straight white men by not sitting down and taking whatever abuse the MRA crowd throws their way. Milo has also been dismissive of comic fans in the past and there is literally zero reason to believe he’s not trying to jump on this bandwagon out of shameless opportunism.

This isn’t the first time characters have swapped identities. That’s a tradition dating at least as far back as the Silver Age (since Milo has never read comics, I should inform him that the Silver Age is ostensibly believed to have begun in 1956 with the introduction of Barry Allen, taking over the mantle of the Flash from the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick). It’s also not the first time that minority characters have taken up the mantle of a well-established white male character. That dates back at least as far as the 70s when black men like Jim Rhodes and John Stewart took up the mantle of Iron Man and Green Lantern from their white male predecessors. It’s also not the first time that a woman has been shown to lift Thor’s hammer. Storm, Rogue, even Wonder Woman have all been shown to hold Mjolnir and gain the power of Thor.

Milo would know this, if he actually read comics. But clearly, he doesn’t.

One of the claims made in the Breitbart article (I’m not going to link to it because they don’t deserve the traffic) is that sales on Thor #4 were far lower than on Thor #1. For one thing, these are numbers of print copies ordered by the comic shops, they don’t necessarily reflect actual sales and don’t take into account digital copies. And two, it’s normal for comic shops to order far more issue #1s than issue #4s. The reason for this is simple—more people will buy the first issue of a comic because of its perceived value as a potential collector’s item.

Milo would know this, if he actually read comics. But clearly, he doesn’t.

More than that, notice how whenever a straight white guy steps into the mantle of another straight white guy, it’s never a gimmick to people like Milo? No, it’s only when a minority steps into the mantle that suddenly it becomes some evil SJW gimmick. To these people, it’s perfectly natural to imagine that someone could believe a different straight white male could fill the role as well as the first straight white male. But it is utterly inconceivable to them that anyone could believe a minority is capable of filling that role. That speaks volumes about their mindset.

Let’s also look at this whole notion of “gimmicks.” Whether or not it’s a gimmick doesn’t matter. Comics, like pretty much every form of entertainment out there, uses gimmicks.

The Avengers movie everyone loves so much? Guess what, that was a gimmick. So was rebooting the Batman films with The Dark Knight Trilogy. Hell, the entire reason Marvel Comics got started was because of a gimmick—Archie Goodwin told Stan Lee they needed a team of superheroes to compete with DC’s Justice League of America, and so Stan came up with Fantastic Four. And it was a gimmick—they were a team of superheroes who bickered with each other. Same thing with Amazing Spider-Man—not only was he a teenager headlining a solo book (teenagers were only supposed to be sidekicks back then), but he was a teenager who faced the same problems that normal teenagers faced. Nick Fury became the Director of SHIELD because Lee wanted to tap into the success of the James Bond films, so he created his own super-spy.

Speaking as a writer, there are lots of ideas I’ve gotten that were basically nothing more than “maybe this’ll be cool” or “maybe this will sell.” Whether or not something originates as a gimmick doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not the execution is there. And Thor has been executed marvelously well.

Milo would know this, if he actually read comics. But clearly, he doesn’t. He never has and he likely never will. He is not a fan and true comic fans should rebuff his attempts to co-opt out passion for his own twisted, misogynist agenda.

Take your sexist bullshit somewhere else, Milo. We want none of it.