Donny Cates Comes Out Against Comicsgate Over Venom Argument

Posted on | by Rich Johnston

Donny Cates is Marvel Comics’ new wunderkind. Taking Venom and Thanos and making those titles sell again, he’s all set to do the same with Guardians Of The Galaxy. With an affinity for Marvel Comics from the nineties, some folk have claimed him for the #Comicsgate, the activist group that wants comics to go back a couple of decades to when they were kids.

They are also not fans of politics in comic books, or rather recognising politics in comics that they couldn’t recognise in the comics they read as kids. And they are against people being hired for what they see as superficial surface qualities rather than talent when this has never, ever happened.

And rather than addressing problems with distribution, price points, the draw of other media for both readers and creators, a monopolistic distribution market and the decline of print, deciding that it’s all down to whether Thor is a woman for a bit or not, wanting comics to become insular, only serving an existing audience rather than trying to find new readers to replace the ones dying off.

It’s basically a throwback movement to when superhero comics were mostly white, male and straight, and exceptions were created ‘organically’ rather than being ‘forced’ into stories. Or rather that’s how they read them at the time. Wilfully choosing not to realise that superhero comic books have always done what comic books are doing now, they just never noticed it when they were children. Probably because they were children. Whether that was Spider-Man Vs Antifa, Squirrel Girl with some really funky artwork or the X-Men being rebooted to appeal to a new demographic who weren’t even reading Marvel comics at the time.

This has seen many repeatedly harassed and the likes of Aubrey Sitterson and Chuck Wendig fired off the comics they were working on.

Donny Cates, like most comic creators, had stayed silent on the matter. But the other day, he got into an argument with some Venom fan who doesn’t like Donny’s take on the character.

And to this, Donny reacted. And he quote tweeted the following.

Quote tweeting. Rather than only seen by people who follow both debaters, it ensures a tweet is seen by the tweeter’s entire fanbase without even the context of the rest of the thread. Donny has 22,000 followers. Lilac Shark has 49. It encourages piling on, and only goes one way. Donny replied to this,

And as the Comicsgate elephant in the room has the spotlight drawn to it….

…responded likewise.

And the turning was swift.

Considering that some of his latest comics have been alongside the likes of Matthew Rosenberg, Tini Howard Vita Ayala and Mags Visaggio and I’d probably say he isn’t…

 

About Rich Johnston

Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.

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