Members of the comic industry recently got a little testy when Chuck Dixon and Paul Rivoche went to the Wall Street Journal about a bias against conservative creators in the industry. Marvel’s Tom Brevoort quickly assured everyone that no “blacklist” exists at Marvel (Can you name one openly conservative writer who is employed there?), and then surmised that it wasn’t conservatives that editors have a problem with, but certain kinds of “behavior” **cough** that might translate into not getting employment.
Sure, no “blacklist” exists, as long as you don’t consider The Amazing Spider-Man writer telling Christians to move to “Christ-land” as evidence that maybe — just maybe — Marvel isn’t too friendly towards guys like Messrs. Dixon and and Rivoche.
Here is Dan Slott’s response to the SCOTUS ruling on the Hobby Lobby case.
Imagine if I found out that my local pool was going to have very specific “women-only” hours for Muslim women, who don’t want to be seen by men outside their immediate family. We’ll use Seattle as an example:
Seema is from Pakistan. Sahra is from Somalia. Both are Muslim. They say having a women-only swim program allows them to get some exercise while observing their religious customs. Seema says their religion requires them to cover in front of men. “We don’t cover our heads in front of our husbands, our dads, brothers,” she says. “But when we go outside we’re supposed to cover for woman’s modesty.”
What if I pulled a Dan Slott-like move, stretched my bigotry muscles, and told Muslim women: “This is America. Go find pools in ‘Muslim Land.'” I’m pretty sure my employer would fire me.
And then there’s this gem:
The thing with Hobby Lobby and other small religious businesses is that they took their grievance to court — and won. They followed the rule of law and the highest court in the land agreed with them. That is not an “asshole” move, but yet Dan Slott likens Christians to “conquistadors” and “assholes.” It’s incredibly mean, but also cartoonish; it’s reminiscent of 1992’s Office Space, where the character Peter Gibbons says “You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.”
Speaking of the Jewish faith, it’s now well-known that Dan Slott is very protective of his ancestry (just don’t mention that his own characters get taken to task by Bleeding Cool for engaging in “Nazi-like experimentation”). How would the Marvel scribe react if someone went full-Dan Slott on Jewish people like he does on Christians and Americans who are strong advocates of the Second Amendment?
Here we see another example of Dan Slott’s intolerance:
Hube over at Colossus of Rhodey made a good point shortly after the tweet went live: How would Dan Slott react to someone who tweeted him in a New York Jewish accent about money?
The tweet was deleted — down the Memory Hole — Dan Slott’s go-to move when he gets caught saying things that reflect poorly on his employer. It’s a good thing the Internet is forever.
If you are a fan of Marvel comics who just so happens to be a Christian, a Second Amendment advocate or simply someone who just doesn’t like seeing bigotry broadcasted via social media, you should probably think twice about buying products put out by Dan Slott. You might want to also consider contacting Marvel. It doesn’t have many standards these days, but there are a few that are hanging by a thread.
Slow clap for Dan Slott. He’s the guy you want to find when you want tweets infused with anti-Christian bigotry, or Marvel comics that are consistently trying to see how low the bar can go.
Update: Dan Slott continues to read this little old blog and attack it from afar because, as we all know, it’s much safer to allow Twitter groupies to massage your ego than to actually defend the indefensible.
Question for Dan Slott: If I just had a beef with a few Jews over a religious issue with political implications, and I told them to go to “Jew-land,” how would you respond? How would my employer respond? That’s right — you’d go ballistic. And then my employer would fire me. But you get to tell a bunch of Christians to go to “Christ-land” without consequences. Hypocrite.
Update II: Marvel’s Tom Brevoort has weighed in. No response to the question “If Chuck Dixon told Dan Slott to go to ‘Jew-land’ over a religious gripe, would he still get work?” Telling.
Someone else brought up similar sentiments about Marvel’s creators over at the New Brevoort Formspring. It turns out that Mr. Brevoort really does embrace the the strange business model “needlessly alienate potential customers” to grow the company.
Douglas Ernst Blog 