Tony Effin’ Harris and guys just like him: The last vanguard of the old business model
As everybody in comic book fandom is well-aware by now, Starman creator Tony Harris flew off the handle this week in a hilariously ill-advised online rant about how scantily-clad faux lady nerd cosplayers are preying upon poor poor white male comic book fans and taking advantage of them…somehow. Yeah, I’m not really sure what he was talking about, either. But what we do know is that he was proud to be the one guy with the gumption to get up on his Facebook soapbox and tell us like it is!
Cue the chorus of indignant, like-minded entitled dudebros, who applaud Harris’ honesty about these hard-hitting problems facing fandom today. Here come Joe Peacock, famous for his claim that “booth babes” are ruining all our lives, and writer/journalist Dirk Manning to add their voices to this issue with equal flare. Meanwhile, in reality, everybody else is not drinking the KoolAid, and providing some much-needed smackdown. Writer Gail Simone added some love and positivity to the week by declaring Cosplayer Appreciation Day on the heels of Harris’ outburst.
My personal favorite commentary came from Christopher Sebela and Matt Fraction (Fraction is always my favorite, but that’s neither here nor there), who compared the sexism of comic fandom to the Republican party’s equally infuriating war on women this election cycle.
While the backlash to Tony Harris and guys just like him was justified, what I personally noticed in my numerous travelings of the interwebs for coverage and commentary was the lack of anger. Yeah, people were mad. There has been a grassroots revolution in fandom and especially in the cosplay community for the equal treatment of women both on and off the convention floor. A fantastic example of this is the now famous post by Tumblr user Beautilation, detailing how she turned a gross and objectifying Comic Con experience into an awesome and empowering moment for cosplayers everywhere. But even for the backlash, beyond what’s going on in conventions, comic book fandom by and large is getting a facelift. As books become more inclusive of female characters, queer characters and characters of color, the same goes for the fandom. And guys like Tony Harris don’t like that.
Say what you want about tight costumes and boob windows, the times they are a’changing. More and more women are writing and drawing for staple books. We have a mixed race Spider-Man, a gay Green Lantern, a female Captain Marvel, a growing number of Muslim superheroes, openly queer heroes are becoming more commonplace, and the race appears to be on between Marvel and DC to see which house has the most female-led titles. No, it isn’t perfect, and there are still a disproportionate amount of white dudes in capes right now, but people are trying. Because people are trying, fans who have historically felt disenfranchised are now encouraged to seek out representations of themselves in these mainstream hero books. Now creators and fans alike have to be more responsible for their behavior, and for how they treat those that have been pushed out of fan spaces for decades.
There’s backlash to that backlash, coming from guys who bemoan women in superhero t-shirts and having to write for somebody other than white dudes, but that comes with the territory. I can’t even be mad, because these voices are getting drowned out in the groundswell of positive creativity. I’m not an optimist by nature, but what I’m seeing on the rack at my local comic book store gives me hope: Comics being written by people who care about the mythology and the fans they’re writing for, and fans who want to see these books thrive. So Tony Effin’ Harris and guys just like him can sit and spin for all I care. They won’t be getting my money any time soon.
