To My Comic Book Heads:

All this "new" talk of "diversity"...
How "The Big Two" are "tryin'"...
What "they" are finally doin' for "us"...
And then the public celebration that follows...

Do you hear yourselves?

What does it say about companies that are finally forced to "diversify"? What were they doing before? What white-supremacist agenda did they have to be economically forced to momentarily deviate from... that we were investing in all along...?

After all these years, why new... why now?

... and who are "they" doin' this for?

I place diversification references in quotes because of the multilevel conflicts inherent in the terminology.

If you have to force placement of human beings into your productions about human experiences, than your work is intensely problematic.

If...
In a world that is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-national with constant migration around it that has existed longer than our recorded history of travel... your company has to struggle to include anything outside of Aryan archetypes within its purposefully structured and manipulated heroic mythology...
Your problem is beyond dysfunction but is rather something else...

I mean, who does that?

What Jesse-Owensian moment had to happen to force a change in approach?

Why do we care so much?

There is nothing about my world that requires diversification.

Instead, what we have is a constant struggle against twisted extremists who have been attempting to shift the world toward their self-serving ideologies for as long as modern civilization has existed... with various degrees of success...

All because the real world was too difficult to compete in without cheating...

All because of deep-rooted inferiority complexes that could not be fully cured by endless acquisition.

Comic books are small enough to fly in under the radar.

How much nastiness can be hidden within a sub-culture before people begin to notice, much less take of import?

As I endeavor to continue to create and produce within this Industry, the labels and terminology become like cages erupting to contain and limit my art...

trying to force it into places that it can be limited and ultimately hidden away.

That is the fight of the "free" comics creator... to connect with a readership in a place where ridiculous yet insidious terminology like "diversity", and the insane "minority", can't stop us from communicating like real people.

Just stories... just art... just "comics".

The struggle continues...

~ Grey