Dissecting Comicsgate (Pt. 1): Comicsgate Begins

While there are many factors which attributed to the formation of Comicsgate, the movement would not have been able to exist at all if not for Gamergate. Gamergate was a similar movement that claimed to be centered around combatting unethical practices concerning video game journalism but in reality was nothing more than a hate campaign against women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals within the gaming industry. The controversy erupted in August 2014, when game developer Zoe Quinn was accused by an ex-boyfriend of sleeping with a critic in order to receive positive press for her then-recent game, DEPRESSION QUEST.

Depression Quest. Copyright © The Quinnspiracy. From https://store.steampowered.com/app/270170/Depression_Quest/.

This, in turn, led to Quinn being the center of repeated harassment by having her personal information hacked and published on public forums.  She was also sent death and rape threats so severe that she was forced to flee her home and seek aid from the FBI. Other prominent female figures in the gaming industry such as feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, founder of the website "Feminist Frequency" and host of the YouTube series "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games," were met with similar targeted harassment when they attempted to speak out against sexist practices and tropes in the gaming industry. This outbreak of widespread internet harassment was primarily spearheaded by white cis heterosexual males who believed that video games were an inherently masculine medium, which they felt was being threatened with the increased presence of feminism and progressive politics. The targets of Gamergate were frequently labeled as “social justice warriors,” or “SJWs,” which is an ironic insult commonly utilized by the far-right to describe people who are left-leaning or promote progressive ideologies. Additionally, Gamergate has been cited by several news outlets as being a precursor to the rise of Alt-Right hate speech, since not only were prominent Alt-Right figures like Theodore “Vox Day” Beale formerly associated with the movement, but similar hate rhetoric and harassment campaigns were also witnessed during events like the 2016 presidential election and Brexit.

In a sense Gamergate served as the foundation for Comicsgate’s formation since it too is a far-right campaign founded on the absurd idea that progressivism is destroying geek culture. However, there were three major incidents that officially helped spark the origins of this particular movement. The first of which was the harassment of comic book writer Chelsea Cain. On October 16, 2016, Marvel released the cover image for the final issue of Cain’s MOCKINGBIRD series, which featured the titular character wearing a t-shirt stating, “Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda.”

"Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda." From Mockingbird #8 (Oct 2016). 
Art by Joëlle Jones and Rachelle Rosenberg. Copyright © Marvel Entertainment.

This led to Cain receiving several sexist tweets from fans, and eventually Cain was forced to temporarily delete her twitter account. Although several fans came to Cain’s support with the hashtag #StandWithChelseaCain, this incident has been viewed as one of the earliest instigators of Comicsgate since it involved the targeted harassment of a feminist creator in a vein similar to Gamergate.

The second major event was an infamous statement made by Marvel’s vice president of sales, David Gabriel on March 30, 2017. During the Marvel Retailer Summit, Gabriel the following statement when he was questioned about the cause of declining single-issue sales:

“I don't know if that's a question for me. I think that's a better question for retailers who are seeing all publishers. What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity. They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don't know that that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales.

We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.”

This assessment was both incredibly offensive and inaccurate. While Marvel did indeed experience a sales slump in 2017, it was because of several other factors like the constant relaunches and renumbering of books, crossover/event comic fatigue (Marvel had released a total twelve event comics over the previous two years), controversial decisions like making Captain America an agent of HYDRA and the company relying solely on the sales figures for single-issues as a determinant for success. Although Gabriel later retracted his comments by acknowledging that books like MS. MARVEL, MILES MORALES: SPIDER-MAN, and UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL sold better through trade paperbacks and digital distribution, the damage was already done. Gabriel’s words unintentionally gave bigoted fans a sense of validation in their racism and sexism as several YouTube channels speaking out against “SJW Marvel” began to emerge, including one channel in particular, “Diversity and Comics,” which we’ll be discussing later. 

The final piece to the puzzle is the “Marvel Milkshake Crew” controversy. On July 27, 2017, the assistant editor of THE UNBELIEVABLE GWENPOOL, Heather Antos, posted a group-selfie of herself and her co-workers on Twitter drinking milkshakes in honor of the late Flo Steinberg.

The Marvel Milkshake Crew.
From https://talkradio.co.uk/news/new-gamergate-female-marvel-comic-editor-suffers-online-abuse-over-selfie-co-workers.

Although the tweet was meant to be a light-hearted tribute to a prominent female figure in comics who had then-recently passed away, the posting was unexpectedly met with a storm of sexist tweets and DMs from fans. In addition to labeling Antos and her colleagues “fake geek girls” and “social justice warriors,” some of the more infamous tweets that emerged included gems like “Gee, I can’t imagine why Marvel’s sales are in the toilet,” and “Can we just get off feminism and social justice and actually print stories.” In fact, one tweet even went as far as to state, “Better have her sign a consent form, she looks like the ‘false rape charge’ type.” The misogynist backlash led to several people in the comics’ community coming to Antos’ support and began retweeting the hashtag #MakeMineMilkshake for a period of three days. Despite this, several of the people (including those responsible for the harassment) claimed that the “Milkshake Crew” controversy was manufactured by Antos, which was a familiar self-defense tactic employed by Gamergaters. And since the hashtag #Comicsgate began to circulate in response to #MakeMineMilkshake, it was with this specific incident that Comicsgate was officially born.