Thought Bubbles: #FireRickRemender and The Outrage Cycle

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an internet commenter in possession of some free time must be in want of a controversy. Anyone who spends any amount of time on social media or perusing message boards will, at any given time, find someone (or a group of someones) who’s pissed off about something. Twitter is where I find most of my internet outrage, and while I will occasionally chime in on a subject, I mostly just like to watch things unfold.

Remember last week’s outrage about Meredith and David Finch taking over Wonder Woman and going out of their way to not use the word ‘feminism’ in an interview on the subject? We were so young then. In those halcyon days, we had an actual thing to be upset about. There were even different levels of outrage to that one – that the two creators tasked with taking over the most iconic female superhero of all time seemed to deny one of the core characteristics of the character; that they seemingly refused to use or simply did not understand the meaning of the word ‘feminism’; that David Finch’s art has become a muddled shadow of its former self. The last one was mostly me, but I still think all of those views are perfectly valid. That was a good controversy about important issues, and that generated some good discussion and more than one excellent think piece on the subject. It was a simpler time, though, when people chose to get upset about things that actually happened.

Later that week, though, something happened. Captain America #22 came out, and in it, Sam “Falcon” Wilson and new-ish character Jet Black (daughter of Arnim Zola, from another dimension) have sex (off-screen – it’s a Marvel comic, after all). They’re drunk at the time, which raises concerns for some, but the thing that really caught fire from this is the idea that it was a statutory rape. A corner of Twitter went nuts, saying that Jet is only 14 years old and calling for Marvel to fire writer Rick Remender. The thing is, though, that it wasn’t real. There was no statutory rape in the comic, as both of the characters were adults, with Jet Black – the character having supposedly been raped – even saying on the very page that the sex was revealed to have taken place that she’s 23 years old.

It turns out that the source of the outrage was a Tumblr user with a historical bias against Remender, and also apparently with poor reading comprehension skills. I came into this controversy after the #firerickremender hashtag had been hijacked by people who knew better, and after an extremely helpful Tumblr post had begun circulating debunking the allegations against Remender and The Falcon.

Full disclosure: I haven’t read Captain America #22 or any of the issues of that series before it, so I can’t comment on the full details of what happened outside of what I’ve read on the aforementioned Tumblr post, which includes a lot of images from and explanation of previous issues, and context for the events of the issue in question. I would wager that a solid 85% of the people who were calling for Remender’s head haven’t read the comic, either.

I’m choosing to believe that the initial poster – I’m not going to link to his page as I’d rather not encourage any hits – honestly made a mistake and misunderstood what happened in the comic, and not that it was a willful lie designed to smear a writer whose work he or she simply doesn’t like. The most troubling thing to me about this whole situation is how readily people believed the story. Given just a few seconds to think, does anyone really believe that Marvel would greenlight a comic in which a superhero, who just featured heavily in a major motion picture, would have sex with an underage girl? I mean, really? Are people so starved for things to be upset about that they’ll grab on to the most unbelievable ideas if it gives them an excuse to rant on Twitter?

It’s a blessing and a curse of the internet and social media that it gives people an instant outlet for whatever they’re thinking or feeling, no matter how uninformed or kneejerk that reaction might be. It’s the calls for Remender to be fired, and how quickly people jumped on that bandwagon, that really take it to a new level of crazy. It’s one thing to not care for the content of a comic and to voice that displeasure, but it’s another to campaign for someone to lose their job. Besides, if you object that strongly to what a writer is doing on a title you care about, there’s a simple solution to that, and it’s not to start a Twitter hashtag – don’t buy the book. Vote with your dollars. Social media provides an incredible amount of access to creators and publishers, but the best way to make your voice heard is still with your wallet.

Regardless, it’s a moot point here. The outrage has mostly died down now that people realize there was no reason for it to begin with. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the next thing to be mad about comes along. The outrage cycle keeps turning. And there’s plenty to be upset about in the comics industry already without people manufacturing more.