Sara Kern

It's incontestable that the availability of digital comics has revolutionized the genre. Digital comics are making entire runs of mainstream comics accessible to anyone from anywhere --- as long as they have an appropriate device. But have we really considered the effects of our transition to digital reading? Is it possible we've sold our comic soul to the technological devil, without realizing what we’ve done? Is Mephistopheles coming for the very characteristics that make comics a unique form of media?

It remains a bleak time for the female comic audience, and for other minority audiences. The recent debacle with Hercules is merely the latest of Marvel’s many ghastly faux pas; for every two steps forward, it seems to take two steps back: it publishes more female titles only to end the majority of them with Secret Wars, and it tantalizes us with Hercules only to promote the status quo inside of continuity. It is easy to lose faith in the publisher’s ability to reform from within, but Marvel has had the key to equal, positive representation for over fifty years now.