X-Men Black: Mojo mocks Comicsgate
"I don't mind SOME change here and there. As long as it's ORGANIC. I just want GOOD STORIES." - Mojo
For those who aren’t aware, the comic community on Twitter and YouTube has been inundated with an anti-inclusion movement that calls itself “Comicsgate” (named not after the Nixon Watergate scandal, but instead after “Gamergate,” the anti-inclusion movement in gaming from a few years ago). While they often mask themselves as simply wanting “good stories,” their complaints center almost solely on the increasing representation of female and minority characters in mainstream comics, as well as the uptick in non-male, non-white, and non-cisgendered writers working for major publishers. Loosely organized around artist-turned-Youtuber Ethan Van Sciver and YouTuber-turned-writer Richard Meyer, Comicsgate’s main ways to express their supposed desire for “good stories” involve stabbing comics with knives, cutting heads off toys, inundating minority comic creators with personal attacks, and, when they really dislike someone, making death threats. Their actions were, for months, ignored by major players in comics, but that has changed recently, as pros like Scott Snyder, Joe Quesada, Mike Deodato, Tom Taylor, Jeff Lemire, Neil Gaiman, and more have stepped up to push back against what many view as a hate movement targeting vulnerable creators.
This week, Scott Aukerman, best known as the host of IFC’s Comedy Bang Bang, jumped into the fray with his portrayal of X-Men villain Mojo in X-Men Black: Mojo. It seems the monstrous “TV exec” from another dimension has a problem with the X-Men. Not the old X-Men, however; the new characters “designed to appeal to changing demographics.” For anyone who’s ever had direct contact with Comicsgate, this dialogue reads like it was directly lifted from their tweets and YouTube videos. While Aukerman doesn’t devote more than the first two pages to this, it was enough to send Comicsgaters into a tizzy, with many of them decrying it as an ‘attack’ against them, which is ironic for a group that doesn’t consider calling women pejoratives or dead-naming trans women abusive or harassing.
The irony is further compounded after Mojo encounters Glob Hermann, a character created by Grant Morrison and the man Comicsgate calls “Caesar,” Ethan Van Sciver. Using a character created by Van Sciver acting as the counterpoint to Mojo’s hatred seems like rubbing salt in the wound, though, when you’re the type of guy that blames harassment targeting the widow of a comic legend on said widow, maybe some salt-rubbing is deserved.
