Hello, Manic.
Today, I’d like to talk about the #SaveStorm movement, and why it’s necessary.
People are angry about representation in comics, how women and minorities don’t get a fair shake. I get that.
Along comes STORM #1.
Storm, as some of you may recall, is my all-time favorite fictional character.
A mainstay of the X-Men, and sometimes their leader. she is a badass, black female superhero of ambiguous sexuality (sometimes straight, sometimes bisexual) who’s been around since 1975.
So when she gets her own book in May 2014, the audience who has been clamoring for representation can go all “YAY! WE WON ONE!”
Happily ever after…right?
That’s the thing about comic books, guys. They need support to keep going. Especially when they’re about minority characters we want to see succeed.
Sales have been down. Greg Pak’s amazing Storm solo series is awesome and gives women and people of color the positive representation they’ve been clamoring for. And it hasn’t even broken the 20,000-copy sales mark. She-Hulk’s solo book sold over 21,000 and it was cancelled.
And now Storm is on the chopping block.
Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Magneto all have their own books as well. Coincidentally, out of these four solo books about X-Men, none of the straight white (or blue) dudes are in any danger of cancellation.
Only the woman. Only the person of color. And she hasn’t even gotten to Issue #6 yet.
#SaveStorm isn’t just important to fans of the character (and there are plenty of those). It’s important to anyone who wants a decent representation of minority characters in a superhero comic.
So please, do your part. If you can, buy this book. Marvel’s main website has digital distribution if you can’t find a local comic store.
If this is important to you, as it is to me, #SaveStorm.
