Former 'Iceman' writer shines a light on Marvel's struggles with representation

In January, there was much excitement around comic book writer Sina Grace, his Iceman series for Marvel Comics, and his latest creation: Shade, Marvel's first drag queen superhero.

Much has changed since then. Iceman is apparently done after five issues, Shade is now called Darkveil, and, with his Marvel work seemingly concluded, Grace has quite a bit to say about how the comics publisher operates behind the scenes, specifically with regard to a creative product that caters to audiences outside the heteronormative "standard" (if there really is such a thing, or ever was).

A little background may be in order: In 2015, an All New X-Men comic revealed that Bobby Drake, the human behind the mutant superhero Iceman, is gay. Then, two years later in 2017, Grace kicked off a solo Iceman series that further explored Bobby's identity.

The spin-off was a critical hit, but it didn't last long; Marvel canceled the series. But brisk sales of the trade paperback for Grace's series convinced the publisher to reverse course and bring Grace back for more. He started another series -- the one that introduced Shade/Darkveil -- that ran for five issues before coming to an end.

It's been a quiet stretch of months around Iceman since that last issue released, but that all changed on Friday when Grace shared a personal blog post. Bearing the title "As Pride Month comes to a close, it’s time I spoke candidly about my experience at Marvel Comics," the writer laid out his until-now-unmentioned grievances with the publisher.

The post begins:

To date, I’ve always been honest about the joy of writing Iceman’s journey as an out gay superhero, but I’ve skirted around the challenges that came along with it. This is partially because I prefer to give off an upbeat vibe, and there’s also a fear that my truth will affect my career. With more corporations patting themselves on the back for profit-led partnerships wherein celebrities take selfies in rainbow apparel, and with buzz that Marvel Studios is preparing to debut their first gay character in the upcoming Eternals movie, there is an urgency to discuss the realities of creating queer pop culture in a hostile or ambivalent environment. Hopefully, my takeaways will serve as a guide for people in positions of power to consider when advocating for more nuanced and rich representation. In an ideal world, embracing our stories and empowering us to tell them will yield far more profitable (and way less messy) results than what I encountered while writing Iceman.

To start with, Grace is unhappy with the way Marvel handled the harassment he faced as the writer behind a gay superhero. After being asked to share links to prove that cyber-bullying was taking place, Grace received a call from an editor -- "these conversations always happen over the phone," he writes -- to help him better cope with the attacks.

That was the expectation, anyway. Instead, the editor launching into a set of "tips and tricks" for dealing with cyber bullies. Grace stopped him there. "All he was going to do was tell me how to fend for myself," Grace wrote. "I needed Marvel to stand by me with more work opportunities to show that I was more than a diversity hire."

The account doesn't get much better from there. At one point, Grace describes how his first editor at Marvel had concerns that Iceman wouldn't land if the character was "too gay." He also gets into the apparent effort he felt on the publisher's part to de-emphasize the spin-off's existence, starting with the fact that the revival was announced on Marvel's homepage.

When Grace decided to go and do press on his own -- something that, he points out, his straight male colleagues face no grief for doing -- the publisher pushed back. A similar scenario played out around the Shade reveal as well.

"Marvel still treated me as someone to be contained, and the book as something to be nervous about," Grace wrote. He admits that some of the obstacles he faced could be ascribed to the reality that all freelancers face in their day-to-day work. As he points out, it "was not a queer person of color" who told him: "it’s not a matter of if Marvel fucks you over, it’s a matter of when."

He doesn't even chalk the whole thing up to discrimination in the end. Grace writes at the outset that he tries to stay upbeat online, and he's willing to put the bulk of the blame on a different and more mundane brand of evil.

"Truly, I don’t even think of this as discrimination, I call it general ineptness," he writes. "It is my belief that if we are telling stories about heroes doing the right thing in the face of adversity, wouldn’t the hope be to embody those ideals as individuals? Instead of feeling like I worked with some of the most inspiring and brave people in comics, I was surrounded by cowards."

Grace has a great deal more to say, and if you're interested in these issues in any way then you owe it to yourself to go check out the full post. But if you were wondering why there's been radio silence since Iceman #5 arrived, now you know.