By David Futrelle
Like the titular character in The Princess and the Pea, the members of the Great Internet Lady Hating Machine have developed a truly impressive sensitivity towards the slightest perceived discomfort. And so it shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise that a small army of perpetually outraged comics fanbabies are currently losing their collective shit over a milkshake selfie.
On Friday, Heather Antos, a Marvel comic editor who just happens to be a woman, tweeted a selfie featuring her and a bunch of her female co-workers enjoying some delicious beverages together. “It’s the Marvel milkshake crew!” she announced to her Twitter followers.
She was immediately swarmed by a squadron of fanbabies furious that such “fake geek girls” had made their way into Marvel’s inner sanctum.
https://twitter.com/BAR199323/status/891847749599199232
https://twitter.com/DiversityAndCmx/status/891978745715843072
You're right, @DiversityAndCmx. No life experience, the creepiest collection of stereotypical SJWs anyone could possibly imagine. https://t.co/ywIRk8UTYx
— DarkJester (@DarkJesterofOz) July 30, 2017
According to Antos, the private messages she got in response to her tweet were considerably less polite. “[T]he internet is an awful, horrible, and disgusting place,” she wrote, noting that she woke up Sunday, two days after she posted the selfie,
to a slew of more garbage tweets and DMs. For being a woman. In comics. Who posted a selfie of her friends getting milkshakes.
And yes, the fanbabies are still going at it today. For many of Antos’ “critics,” the selfie proved a perfect excuse to rant about Marvel’s alleged “anti-white, anti-men agenda.”
https://twitter.com/MonsieurBallin/status/891666775015694336
This is why marvel comics is killing the industry no one wants to be fem moaned feminist propganda in a superhero comic.
— Ceecko of one (@Ceeckoful) July 30, 2017
Maybe Marvel should just close shop. I'd rather that than see them lose their dignity for a Marxist agenda.
— Maeko (@MaekoDaekal) July 29, 2017
https://twitter.com/Red_Vanguard/status/891918378352472064
One fellow wrote out a mini-manifesto explaining how the eeeevil SJWs were destroying comics.
https://twitter.com/W00dlee/status/891874744802398208
The critics filled their angry tweets with an assortment of buzzwords that will be instantly familiar to anyone who followed GamerGate.
https://twitter.com/DiversityAndCmx/status/891875572741230592
https://twitter.com/CanuckCon/status/891822485305516038
https://twitter.com/darling_kun/status/891850198552653824
Not that the fanbabies didn’t have their own “narrative” to promote. One of the central tenets: that so-called SJWs only pretend to like comics.
https://twitter.com/thebechtloff/status/891705124405604357
Comics themselves were irrelevant, SJWs wanted another notch on their bedpost of Moral Victories. It was never about content, just control
— RJ Frazer (@rjfrazer) July 29, 2017
https://twitter.com/DiversityAndCmx/status/891674600475676673
Some saw the all-female selfie as a threat not only to men but to … white people in general, predicting an imminent White Genocide of Marvel characters.
Diversity for #Marvel Comics means get rid of all White Men.
— Veritas (@Veritas4UToday) July 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/thebechtloff/status/891515050502107136
It didn’t take long for things to get creepy.
https://twitter.com/thebechtloff/status/891503206282522624
Naturally, the reactionary fanboys turned on those who offered solidarity to the Milkshake Crew.
https://twitter.com/eldermeeseeks/status/891905588925521920
https://twitter.com/johndavidson83/status/891799233275322368
https://twitter.com/Daddy_Warpig/status/891857865140445184
And others tried to dismiss the whole thing as fake:
https://twitter.com/DoctorDooomile/status/891683546246643712
https://twitter.com/DiversityAndCmx/status/891985792591122432
https://twitter.com/laughingdrag/status/891834215377096709
https://twitter.com/DiversityAndCmx/status/891984421519314944
https://twitter.com/Stmpy_Mch/status/891916686953136128
Happily, at this point the “virtue-signalers” are winning. A wide assortment of non-reactionary comics artists, sellers and fans, female and male, have been showing their solidarity with the Marvel Milkshake Crew, filling the #MakeMineMilkshake hashtag with tweets like these:
https://twitter.com/PlinaGanucheau/status/891848514170433536
https://twitter.com/bookswpictures/status/891766052463325184
https://twitter.com/mollyjane_k/status/891742534074073090
I think I should apologize about blabbering off topic about a comic book… ^^; (I can’t help it. I like the silly thing very much.) Sorry. ^^;
that’s a pretty amazing premise for a comic! i’d never heard of this before, because I’m not really a comics nerd, but i’m quite curious about it now…
A few thoughts on all this:
1. If these guys want a group that had a real long-lasting impact on American comics, they should look up the Comics Code Authority sometime. The SJW boogiepeeps can only dream of getting that kind of enforcement for their POV.
2. I take it these guys never heard of, nor read the first Chris Claremont X-Men run, which was basically the 1980’s X-Men. 😀 Really now….
3. Non-whites have been ‘taking over’ ‘white’ roles since at least the 1980’s. Monica Rambuea (sp? on last name), a Black woman who gained the ability to transform herself into virtually anything on the electromagnetic spectrum, was introduced as the new Captain Marvel.
Also, when the Captain America was temporarily taken over by Jonny Walker, his sidekick Bucky was a Black guy. (Until a letterwriter pointed out some of the problems with calling a Black guy ‘Bucky’, at which point the character’s name was changed to Battlestar.)
4. Seriously, all of those complaints about bad writing and “SJW-ing”, I’ve heard them all over the decades. That’s nothing new. (The first two issues of Teen Titan Spotlight, anyone? For an example of “social consciousness” writing with a heavier hand than a neutron star?)
Plus the main reason social consciousness writing was strongly discouraged even back then – the heroes would have their moment of revelation about the social injustice being showcased, vow to fight it ‘with everything they had’, then never mention it again over the rest of their run. (Again, the aforementioned TTS*.) Seriously, what was the point of bringing up said injustices if only the status quo is going to be shown the following issue(s)?
*A better example of this is likely the 1960’s panel where an old Black guy asks Hal Jordan (paraphrased a bit) “I’ve heard you’ve done great work helping the (alien) orangeskins with their social problems, but when have you ever helped the (human) blackskins with theirs? Answer me that, hero!” But since I have never read that Green Lantern issue, nor know enough of the context surrounding that issue, I decided to stick with the story I actually read as my example.
Um.
And in another reply…
..But seeing women working productively and happily in the comic industry = massive outrage?
These will be the same guys who will find an online forum and ask other guys on it “Why don’t women like comics? Me?” etc.
Any way, this whole fiasco brought back a classic!
“Diversity in Comics” has a Youtube channel. He spends his time vlogging about Marvel doing stuff he doesn’t like.
@Scild
Flattered ?
I notice your explanation of the EAI alliance (or whatever you’ll call it) is very, uppercase W, Western. Not that African, MENA, and South Asian societies can’t be scientifically, technologically, and economically advanced. But I just said ‘advanced’, and that’s some baggage I didn’t fully realize existed til I wrote it just now
Point is, your description of this nation is focused on Western metrics of quality: Nobel lareates, GDP, and internet speed. Important stuff, obvs. Just, I know about the Ethiopians’ government from your paragraphs, but I know more about the Norwegians’ culture from a single sentence. As a (brown, admittedly) western reader, EAI doesn’t come across as exotic at all. And that smacks more of erasure than sensitivity…
Also, there’s a tendency to group all of Latin America together, but the history and resultant cultures of Brazil vs Argentina vs Peru vs Mexico vs Haiti etc is important not to paint over
Sounds super cool! Hope it sees the light of day, cos I think I’d get a kick outta that. Was annoyed that Code Geass’ world was run by Victorian Brits. Best y’all could come up with? This is way more interesting ?
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes:
I’m pretty sure that Skullkickers would be far too complicated for these faff-monkeys. And probably having too large an SJW-quotient as well, which is saying something about the ease with which one can set the whine brigade off since it is in fact just a comic about kicking skulls. Literally and metaphorically.
@Malitia:
I disagree.
Lumen8:
To be honest, I think anyone playing Excel would be in the shadow of the incomparable Kotono Mitsuishi.
As for milkshakegate, don’t these idiots realise that they’re harming the medium they claim to love? The more you subject people in the industry to a torrent of abuse, the more people (not just women) will decide that they’d rather do something else than work in such a toxic environment. When is it ever a good idea to deplete the talent available? Also, good job on reinforcing the stigma attached to fandom!
“Jack Kirby was medevaced for frostbite from a combat zone”
If a few happy, creative women getting together to enjoy milkshakes launches you into a category 5 Twitter snit, that “Manly Men Who Menned More Manfully” card really isn’t as effective as you think it is.
(Jack Kirby also had a career in romance comics. Awful, stereotyped, rigid gender-role comics, but still – romance comics. Superheroes were considered passe at that time.)
I need to get my ass to a comic shop and take a selfie drinking a milkshake.
@ Buttercup
The team responsible for 2000AD (the comic that gave us people like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison) started out on girls’ comics. Because such comics were seen as a bit of a ghetto, the publishers didn’t take any interest in them. That allowed the team to be very experimental. They had a “No ponies, no ballet dancers” policy. The comics were very successful. And not just with girls. I certainly wasn’t the only boy reading them. So it was a natural evolution into 2000AD and perhaps inevitable that 2000AD ended up with a 50:50 boy/girl readership. Couple of examples from the girls comics here:
http://girlscomicsofyesterday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Misty_the-sentinels_01e.jpg
Jack Kirby was Jewish, and according to legend, one time a group of fascists came by the Timely office building and called up to Timely and said they were there to beat him up because they’d got mad at his comic book work.
Kirby got in the elevator to go down and meet them but they’d scarpered by the time he got there.
Sounds about right for all the folks upset over milkshakegate.
Also, Kirby fought in a war, something the 101st Fighting Keyboardists are absolutely terrified of doing.
Re: Romance comics — lots of people had experience at them. John Romita Sr. drew a lot, so many that by the time he took over on Spider-Man from Steve Ditko, a lot of the style he developed for romance comics came with him. So many elegantly crying women, and glamour poses …
Also, I’ve heard “Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane” described as an effort to get boys to read “girl” comics.
Many comics have had traditionally left-wing messages, not to say they couldn’t also be massively problematic. There was a comic in which Captain America talked to kids about how it’s wrong to discriminate against people based on race, religion, or national origin.
Frank Miller is really the only majorly successful conservative or right-libertarian comic author I can think of.
Speaking of women in comics, can anyone recommend a series written/illustrated by a woman that’s a favorite of theirs? It doesn’t have to be superhero or any specific genre. Like I recently bought Lumberjanes but now I can’t find it. In the meantime I’m looking for it but I also like recommendations.
It can be any style, any genre. I’m just not as aware of what female comics creators are around as id like to be
@Redsilk: heh, whoever was whining about the X-Men being convoluted doesn’t seem to realize how many of those kudzu seeds were Chris Claremont’s planting…
Ptf. Oh YEAH? Well, I’ll bet the uppity cunt who cosplayed Joker’s daughter WHO WAS ON 5 PAGES MAXXXXXXXXXXXXXX for ONE comic. PATHETIC. She was only made for the feminist plot to overthrow male characters and the Joker, the PRINCE of crime himself.
I’ll bet she doesn’t even know who Squeegie Man is. The goddamn faker nerd girl TART trying to infiltrate OUR spaces. Why can’t these women let us have just this ONE thing?!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Checkm8t, femininismiminiz
(begin sarcasm) Everyone knows that women only pretend to like comics because they’re trying to have hypergamous relationships with comic-reading Chads. (end sarcasm)
Monika the comics fan –
Your comment on superheroes just punching each other mindlessly reminded me of Scott McCloud’s “Destroy!”, from 1986. If I recall correctly, it was exactly that, for pages and pages.
I think the fanbabies would have missed the point entirely, had they been alive to read it.
Superman has also been featured in a poster telling a diverse group of schoolkids that if they hear anybody being rude to people on account of race, religion, etc., they should tell that somebody that they are being “un-American.”
http://www.snopes.com/superman-1950-poster-diversity/
The Superman radio show also attacked the Ku Klux Klan:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/23157/how-superman-defeated-ku-klux-klan
Supes has always fought for justice, and especially the social justice variety. Keep up the good work, Kal-El.
Convoluted X-Men storylines? Mary Sues? Unresovled issues from Secret Wars? Ugly artwork?
They do realize that they are basically describing 90s Marvel comics to a t, don’t they?
I smell some fake geek-guys trying to bash perceived SJWs in a field they don’t understand.
(Oh, and utopian fantasy? Ever heard of fucking Star Trek?)
If we’re doing diversity in comics that gives me another chance to post this. And everyone seems to like seeing a Nazi get a kicking.
That’s Ebony Jones. Top MI6 agent from late 70s early 80s Brit comic The Crunch. Weirdly she was created by the same bloke who wrote (the British version of) Dennis the Menace.
My wife passed the Princess test when we were first married. Well, I didn’t have a single pea, so I used a can instead. But she felt them.
@History Nerd
Frank Miller is…strange. From what I understand he unapologetically voted for Hillary over Trump (who he seemed to despise).
In other news…these fake geek boys have their own comic they can rally behind, the garbage fire that is a comic on the real life violent criminal Based Stickman: https://mic.com/articles/182821/a-steve-bannon-propagandist-is-turning-the-alt-rights-antihero-based-stick-man-into-a-comic-book#.vGfrxDweb
I have to wonder: where were all these whiny fanboys in the 1980s when some REALLY egregiously self-consciously pro-social-justice comics were being printed by the Big 2 here in the US? I’m talking about the Power Pack comic where the superkids helped out a friend who was being molested by her dad. The Teen Titans comic about how Drugs Are Bad. The Spider-Man comic about sexual abuse of a minor. All done to prove comics weren’t contributing to the downfall of society, and just about all of them were written with about this much grace:
Bear: Ah, another day to chop down virgin timber! Hee hee.
Rockin’ Robin: Hey there, you bear! Chopping down trees is WRONG! Tee hee.
Bear: Gosh, Rockin’ Robin. Nobody ever told me. I’m going to change my life and do good instead of evil.
@ vicky p
1970s Brit comics sort of missed that memo. 🙂