I definitely want to revisit Ayo and Aneka, and they’ve left that door open.
Are you doing to continue to work on other comics? World of Wakanda has been cancelled for now. Sometimes you have to invest the capital to make these projects work. And I’m thinking, “Well that’s because you haven’t followed through on those initiatives.” Sometimes you need to take a chance and give things time and publish more than one or two or five issues. But you have this one Marvel vice president saying diversity isn’t selling. I had an overall great experience working with Marvel. Even though there’s still a huge disparity, there are more people of color in those areas than in comics. That’s why it’s happening faster in film and television. Why do you think the film industry is a bit ahead of the comic book world in this respect?Ĭhange is slow, and change in communities dominated by white men is even slower. Studios seem to be doing a pretty good job marketing those movies to all kinds of audiences. We’re beginning to see superheroes that aren’t just straight, white men onscreen, like in Black Panther and Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman.
I don’t know that they recognize what kind of economic potential there is in distributing to different communities. But I don’t think they need to because they can make plenty of money selling Captain America and Batman to their core audience. I think if someone powerful enough asks them to do it, it could happen. I had no idea until I started working on World of Wakanda that that was the case.ĭo you think the publishers are willing to reach out to a broader audience? There are four comic book stores within five miles of my house in Lafayette, Indiana. A lot of people don’t realize where their local comic book stores are. They can find ways to reach other communities and educate people on where to buy comics. But many of the readers I brought along with me had no idea where to find the comic book. When something is in the New York Times, of course, it’s going to a wider audience.
But I didn’t see them recognizing that they really were only talking to the comics audience. I was able to do a lot of interviews in advance of the first issue. They definitely promoted World of Wakanda, and my publicist was really good about getting the story out that it was happening. What was your experience with Marvel’s distribution of World of Wakanda? During San Diego Comic-Con last weekend, the author spoke to TIME about how the industry can attract new readers, the future of World of Wakanda and her coming work on the comic Lumberjanes.Ī lot has been made of the fact that we’re getting a more diverse array of characters on the page, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the comic book world is completely inclusive. Educating non-comics readers about where to find superheroes who look like them would be good for business, she argues. Gay, while she says she had a good experience with Marvel, argues that publishers could do a better job of reaching out to a broader range of readers. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not.” They didn’t want female characters out there. Marvel recently cancelled the comic, a decision that came on the heels of a Marvel’s vice president of sales claiming, “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity.
Roxane Gay made her first foray into the comic book world last year with World of Wakanda, a spinoff of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther series that featured queer black female characters.