Comicsgate 2.0

I came back to Twitter and YouTube on Friday after a week, where I hadn’t had the time to keep up on the goings on within the hashtag movement called #comicsgate. And, boy oh boy, had something changed all of a sudden.

Now, a week before, Youtuber and Twitter comedian Nerkish, had been officially denounced by the most prominent voice within ComicsGate, Ethan van Sciver, and as a result he, and another prominent voice had backed out of a comic book, leaving @cecilsays with an indiegogo-project all of his own. The controversy thus sparked, and the resulting confusion, started the very pertinent debate on just exactly WHAT ComicsGate is/was.
This, in turn, proved that ComicsGate is just a hashtag, as the number of opinions on just what ComicsGate is, is almost equal to the amount of people asked. On a public Youtube stream with Rekieta Law  Van Sciver, formally decided to distance himself from ComicsGate and announced the formation of All Caps Comics, and announcing his intention to run this as a comics publisher henceforth.

On social media, opponents of the hashtag movement rejoiced, as they saw the biggest threat to their modus operadi.

So, is ComicsGate dead?

Well… The hashtag movement has changed. The thing is that it was always made up of three different types of people. First there were the conservative creators, and creators who disagreed with the direction that the editorial staff at Marvel and DC was taking. Second there were the YouTube critics and commentators who had been voicing their opinions on the comics, from which they felt more and more disenfranchised. Thirdly were the common fan, who had had enough of attempts to sell increasingly ridiculous gimmicks in a futile attempt to bring back the sales of yesteryear.
Now, the hashtag movement has split into three distinct creatures. The creators are stepping out of it and are doing what they need to do now. They’re setting up their own alternative publishers, they are focusing their attention to actually making comics. The critics and YouTubers are going to continue doing what they do best, review and criticize comics, both from the “CG-adjacent” creators and from the established publishers. And lastly the fans, for whom the Gate in ComicsGate became less a reference to the WaterGate scandal, and more of metaphorical gate from which they left the established publishers and truly voted with their wallets.

The future of ComicsGate remains to be seen, but the schism in comic book fandom can only deepen. Perhaps there will be some sort of reconciliation in the future, perhaps not. Only one thing is certain, for a large portion of comics fans, ComicsGate became the vocalization of their discontent, and the big publishers’, editors’, and creators’ reaction to their discontent and endorsement of doxxing of YouTubers has turned them away for good.