Anonymous asked:

I just came across a Buzzfeed article about Riri Williams and you writing her as the new Iron Man character, and I'm HYPED AS SHIT for one, but almost immediately I saw dozens of comments on the fact that you, a white male, shouldn't be allowed to write a female POC character and that they should have hired a black writer for the books. After doing my own bit of research, I couldn't find any mainstream POC comic writers and I'm extremely upset by this. Are there any that you can/would recommend?

brianmichaelbendis answered:

of course i want more women of color working in comics.  i want more every walk of life to find their way to whatever their dream life is. i really do. i teach to help people. i certainly don’t do it for the money :)

but to answer your one question… there are MANY female creators of color.

http://www.womenincomicscollective.org

is a great resource;

there are women of different backgrounds working in all facets of comics.  there are woman working on almost every book i work on right now.

including many editors who might not have the flashiest job but their influence is ENORMOUS!

but there should and could be more and systemic racism is real and it drives me mental.  

but as far as Riri, it wasn’t like marvel had a character they cooked up in the diversity machine and it was me and a woman of color up for the gig and they shoved her aside to hand it to me.  i know some want that to be the narrative but it ain’t.

i created the character. i brought it to the book. no one asked me to. no one told me to. i did it all on my own. soon after, in development, i discovered what her potential was and marvel liked where i was going with it. in came @mikedeodatojr​ to breathe life into her.

exactly how it went for me with miles, jessica jones, maria hill… and so many others.

but i am not a person of color. i never will be. nor am i a blind catholic lawyer from hell’s kitchen, nor have i been bitten by any spider, let alone a radioactive one, i am not a raccoon like creature with bad grammar and a rocket pack,  and i never was a homicide detective that used to be an immortal super hero.

but i am a writer.

writer’s write stuff. all kinds of stuff. and if i was a person of color it would still be the same job. i would write all kinds of characters. all kinds of flavors and tones and perspectives. i write to discover things outside my perspective. every writer does. 

so i write books i would like to read, books i would be proud to show people, books that hopefully better reflect the world around us than the previous generations of creators were able to do at the time.

that is what i can do and i am doing it with every fibre of my being. 

AND i’m doing it while being called racist to white people AND black people. i’m doing too much and not enough at the same time.  i am doing it with my face being plastered all over white supremacists hate sites. 

maybe i’ll write about that too.