I was all ready to gush about my love for Mariko Tamaki (of which there is plenty) and her Hulk as well as her Supergirl: Being Super, but before I hit “reply” I had to leave for a meeting with three dudes who tried to explain what comics action figures were for and then tried to explain to me who Killer Croc is.

(Disclaimer: I am a comics buyer and have been reading comics since I was 11, and I’ve had it up to here with suppliers assuming that I know nothing.)

Totally unrelated rant, sorry. But it made me love and appreciate this post 100% more when I got back, thank you so much for writing it.

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR THE MUSH, I have honestly become the most mushy human woman in the past few months. Everything makes me cry these days. I am glad we are friends toooooo, and I’m glad you liked this post — I fretted a lot over whether I could say what I wanted to say cogently, and I wasn’t fully happy with how it came out. Words: They are hard.

oh God Jill yes, I think about this all the time. In this political atmosphere especially, it’s so fucked up to see ostensible allies making light of marginalized people’s concerns. Bleh.

Same here! And it makes me sad because at the same time this nonsense is going on, a whole bunch of really interesting writers are working in the Marvel stable on a bunch of really interesting characters. And I want those stories! I think Marvel likes to silo “new” readers in specific titles while not actually making much of an effort to change how they operate overall.

NOT THE BEST RIGHT?

I never watched him! Only read his columns, and man, in those later years, he just completely lost the ability to put together a criticism. He just said a lot of words, none of which seemed remotely connected to the others.

Yeah, exactly. Comics make themselves a very hostile place to readers who don’t resemble their imagined default audience.

Yay! Yes, I am waiting for my library to get Mockingbird and I also really want to read Tamaki’s Hulk. I love her as a writer!

Ha yes that was kind of his brand all along — but my local paper used to run his column, and at the end there, his sentences didn’t even hang together nicely. It was like he was saying a string of totally unconnected things.