Comics Fans Too Toxic? Internet Troll Harassment Over Mockingbird For The Birds
Ryan Franks
I don’t like dumping on the comic book industry every article. It would sometimes make this easier if I did, but the good things the industry does should be pointed out alongside the bad. That being said we as comic book fans need to look at the things we do for good and ill.
There was news reported recently that Chelsea Cain, writer of the Mockingbird comic from Marvel, quit Twitter over harassment from Internet trolls. As an aside, it took me a minute to settle on Internet trolls to describe the people harassing Cain. I had some other choice descriptors, but I do try and keep these family friendly, which is sometimes an effort if you know how I usually talk. Fanboys also came to mind, but as much as I dislike fanboys there’s no way to know that fanboys alone are responsible for this.
There is something truly toxic about comic book fans. I don’t know if it’s growing up a being labeled a nerd that drives these people to be defensive and petty. I don’t know if they’re just men’s rights types looking for a target. I do know that it’s nasty and petty and it’s got nothing to do with wanting to debate an issue or voice a disagreement about plot or character.
Some of this problem I think comes from the platform these types engage in. Twitter is a fundamentally limiting tool for conversation. You can’t have a meaningful discussion in 160 characters. The point of Twitter seems to be sending worldwide texts, but when I send my friends texts it to find out if they want to go to the movies or which weekend they want to get together for Dungeons and Dragons. The entire world neither needs to know I’m doing these things or when I’m planning on doing them.
Because this is a problem that plagues female writers and artists more than men, but it’s not exclusive to them. When Nick Spencer’s first issue of Captain America Steve Rodgers released, he got death threats over the final page of Cap saying “Hail, Hydra”. Those people didn’t know the context of that sentence and yet they still needed to threaten a complete stranger over something they read in a comic book. That is not rational and it makes me not want to be associated with comic book fans. I don’t have a Twitter account because of people like that. I don’t need that small minded crap in my life.
Social media should be about creators and fans, the entire industry and fans, to discuss the issues the fans have with what publishers are doing for the betterment of both, but I often think that if fans are just going to hurl abuse then why should the industry in general or creators in particular care what we have to say. It shouldn’t just be people like me and others on the various comic news sites writing editorials about what we personally don’t like about how things are going, partly because why should the industry listen to any one of us. Working together is how you make an industry change the way they operate. Voting with your dollar will make them take action.
Which brings me back to Mockingbird; Cain got most of her trolling from issue right of that book because the cover had Bobbie Morse wearing a shirt saying “Ask Me about My Feminist Agenda”, which was the final issue of that book. Why would it be so important for these septic hemorrhoids on the ass of fandom to attack an author on a book that was already done and over with? Why do they need to pour salt on that? Even if you where trying to change the book in the most thoughtless way possible, you are coming way too late to the party and you should have just stayed home.
