controversy, from the Internet

UPDATE: Ms. Marvel and the Good Business of Democracy

Before U.S. Election Day 2016, Sacred and Sequential posted a critique of the coverage provided by The New York Daily News‘s Ethan Sacks of the forthcoming Ms. Marvel #13.

Good to his word, Mr. Sacks did provide several comments via private Direct Message on Twitter. And, in the spirit of open dialogue, I republish the majority of them here:

ethanjsacks's avatarIn my opinion, my making Ms. Marvel the face of the voting push, Marvel is subtly but definitely skewing left considering how vile Trump and many of his supporters have been to the Muslim American community.

I do disagree with you that Marvel’s motivations are just entertainment, though maybe it didn’t come across well with my clunky writing. (The original story was a quick turnaround “spot news” story, not an in-depth enterprise piece). If it was they would have had Captain America give a non-partisan get out the vote message. Disney, after all, is the world’s largest tent and I doubt they want to alienate paying customers on any side of the political spectrum from paying their tickets to enter. That’s not a dig at the company. I get it.

To sum up my point: Marvel’s heart was in the right place, but their timing wasn’t.

I do, however, think the timing is a misstep by Marvel. To me it’s likely a publishing glitch. That’s my educated opinion. But if you are doing the service of asking people to get out and vote, it has to go out on stands before Election Day. Otherwise you’ve missed your window to make a difference in this particular election, participation in which is clearly the intent of the writer and publisher based on the dialogue. It’s not written to galvanize a long-term political movement, but rather more of a a specific get out the vote.

The News is also a news outlet for mainstream audiences and my job, as I see it, is to distill pop culture stories that can be complex to an understandable summary that in this case will make sense to non comic fans, too. Hence the summarizing up in one quick graph who Ms. Marvel is.

We wouldn’t publish five pages of a comic book for two reasons: 1.) we’re not in the PR business for Marvel and 2.) our web site is really set up for that layout-wise, hence the cropping of a single panel that felt illustrative of the story. If we posted a full page readers wouldn’t be able to read all the copy.

Feel free to quote any of my answers if it helps.

Rather than reflexively flinging off a rebuttal to Ms. Sacks’s counterpoint, S&S chooses to let his comments speak for themselves. With Ms. Marvel #13 having hit stands this past week — not to mention Donald Trump’s upset win — additional commentators may bring more light to these questions in the weeks and months ahead.

Mr. Sacks’s time and willingness to respond are, nevertheless, sincerely appreciated.