MICHAEL DAVIS: What’s your problem?
For the past few years I have hosted a panel at various conventions called The Black Panel. Before that, every so often I used to be a part of a Blacks in Comics panel.
I started the Black Panel to try and avoid all the “Marvel and DC are racist” dialogue that seemed to be the theme of some of the “Blacks in Comics” panels.
As you can see from the stunning photo that accompanies this column, I am a black man. I am a black man but I do not speak for all black people. Nor do I expect any other black person to speak for me. My views are my views and I am solely responsible for what I say. To that end I have a question to ask some of my fellow black creators:
What’s your problem?
I am very proud to be a black man and I hope by my work I have done my race proud. But here’s what I try not to do. I try not to diminish by words or actions anything that other black creators are trying to do. In other words I don’t talk bad about other black projects regardless of if I think their projects are any good or not. I am proud and glad that other black creators are doing some great work in this field. But they are responsible for what they do, not me.
That said, I have been hearing quite a bit of rumblings about my Black Panel. The complaint I hear the most is that my panel is exclusive. Some black creators have been complaining about not being represented. Well, yes it is exclusive. I put the panel together; I bring it to the con. I am responsible.
Here’s a reality check. If I don’t know you (or your work) how am I to include you? And frankly why should I? Should I include you just because you are black? Just because I drive a sports car, should I be able to race in the Indy 500? (more…)
When I and Mary, my sweetie, sit around doing the couch potato thing, it’s always best to head for the commercial free stuff because it’s guaranteed that a high percentage of the commercials are going to offend her to the point of a rant. Not that the rants aren’t entertaining but I have to keep reminding her, “It isn’t supposed to make sense; it’s trying to sell something.” Or “It doesn’t work for you because you’re not the target audience.”
Back when my ex-husband and I were first getting heavily involved in online comics fandom and attending lots of conventions, there weren’t a lot of women con-goers, so we all tended to stand out a bit and more or less gravitate towards one another. As I recall there weren’t a lot of “booth babes” in those days, so the women con-goers consisted mostly of either readers (what we would call “fangirls” today but which term hadn’t even come into vogue by that point) or comics creators’ spouses, with the very occasional industry pro like Colleen Doran and Maggie Thompson and Heidi MacDonald.
There are those people in the American comics market and readership that says that the manga coming in from overseas is printed on cheap paper, the stories are incomprehensible, and they just keep churning out more and more of them so much that they’re clogging up the shelves.
