‘You Are a Threat to Them’

By Eve L. Ewing | Author of the Marvel series Ironheart

My Twitter notifications were a garbage fire. They said I had no talent, that I was a harbinger of everything that was going wrong in the comics industry. Some of them used coded language like “forced diversity.” Other messages, like a simple image of a burning cross, were more direct.

It was December 2017 and everything was a culture war; the world of comics was no different. Comicsgate had emerged beginning in 2016: a loose conglomeration of hashtags, YouTube channels and Twitter accounts that derived glee from the targeted harassment of women, trans people and people of color. That included real people, like me, and fictional people, like the character I’m best known for writing: a Black teen girl from Chicago named Riri Williams who enters the valiant fray of Marvel superheroes under the moniker Ironheart.

As a Black woman with an established public internet presence, I was used to harassment. I had some tried-and-true strategies: block, mute, ignore and go do something else with your day.

But there was something fundamental that I didn’t understand, and it bugged me. Of all the things I had said and done in public, of all my commentary about policing and politics and education and media, nothing had attracted a firestorm like the one prompted by the mere rumor that I might be writing Ironheart.

Source: New York Times

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