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§ Marvel E-i-C Axel Alonso who is of Mexican heritage, talks about diversity with Fox News Latino; I’ve heard him say similar things before but it’s always worth repeating:

“People out there reading our comic books are of all sizes, creeds and colors and it’s our responsibility to make them feel included,” Axel Alonso, editor in chief of Marvel Comics, told Fox News Latino. “This isn’t some PC initiative, this is capitalism. This is about supply and demand.”

But this is not the first time a Latino has been given top billing. Just last year, the media was in a frenzy over Marvel’s decision to kill off their “Ultimate” version of Spider-Man, Peter Parker, and replace the character with a half black, half Latino character named Miles Morales.

“For us, [the decision to change the character] was about many things,” said Alonso. “One of the things was the joy of knowing that there would be a child out there who would see Spider-Man peel back that mask to see a different face and a face that resembled their own.”


That’s Miss America Chavez from Young Avengers above.

§ Gary Tyrrell has the harrowing story of how the Blind Ferret website—host to many popular webcomics— was hacked and the backups were lost. The takeaway: MAKE BACKUPS AND STORE THEM IN A DIFFERENT PLACE. As someone who has suffered many crashes and data losses of various kinds, this can’t be said enough—BACK UP OFTEN, REDUNDANTLY.

We at Fleen have, in the past, mentioned the need for creators to keep backups of their work so that years of effort can’t be lost. We’ve mentioned creators who’ve had the bad fortune to run afoul of those who would use their sites for nefarious purposes. But last week took the proverbial cake as the main Blind Ferret hosting servers got taken down by nefarious types, seemingly not to host their own content, but for the sheer vandalistic joy of breaking stuff. I come to this conclusion because they didn’t just break the websites — they also wiped the local backups.

Venture Bros. Season 5 is back on May 19th!

§ Here is one of a series of videos called The Comic Book Storyteller; in this episode, Ron Frenz, Barry Kitson, Jeff McComsey and host Frick Weber (author of EARTHLINGS and THE FIELD ON THE EDGE OF THE WOODS) talk about the working process.

§ News from earlier in the week we missed: J. Michael Straczynski will direct his first film, THE FLICKERING LIGHT, which is about Romani prisoners in the Berlin-Marzahn concentration camp who were forced to work as actors during production of TIEFLAND, a movie directed by and starring Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. JMS also wrote the script.

The Walking Dead is back on Sunday and here’s a preview. Surprisingly, things look bleak and deadly. The Talking Dead, the talk show hosted by Chris Hardwick, will also be back following the new episode, with a one hour chat-a-thon with guests Kevin Smith and Steve Yuen.

3 COMMENTS

  1. “The big question: who’s going to finish the film when JMS quits halfway through?”

    Chris Roberson.

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