Former Marvel Writer Speaks Out on Company’s Lack of Diversity

One former Marvel writer is speaking out on the company’s lack of diversity. Sina Grace was once the writer for Iceman, but the creative is calling out the company on his personal blog with a story about how he felt editors were lying to him. Grace felt like Marvel was stringing him along with talks of plans after Iceman. The writer pitched an all-ages Spider-Man book to a different publishing house that he felt like was a good story. Unfortunately for Grace, it wasn’t picked up and an editor emailed the writer telling him that the company would, “like to keep the focus on Iceman for now.” Adding to the confusion on Grace’s end is the fact that talent management told him that they wanted people with experience writing all-ages content, but he had numerous examples of work in that category. Then the writer highlighted for the project ended up having no experience in that all-ages sector.

“Stories like what I’ve written need to be considered when discussing if Marvel has actually done anything to be accountable for not only hiring more diversely, but for fostering an environment where those people feel valued,” he said near the end of his blog post. “My only advice to Marvel would be: fucking hire a third-party organization to teach you all how to do this right… you can’t keep propping Sana up on a podium and pat yourselves on the back for doing half of the bare minimum.”

Grace continued, “I hate that I still love your books (I spent good money buying the oversized Silver Surfer Black collection), and I just wish that the gatekeepers were a bit more responsible and cognizant of how deep their behavior and apathy cuts. Granted, this is a company that has a bad reputation for not treating anybody fairly, so there is always the argument that Marvel Comics is just run by a box of pythons who indiscriminately poison and devour folks. I’m not sure… after 18 months away from them, I still try to excuse the bad behavior and blame myself for how things went down.”

Last year, Marvel Studios EVP of Production Victoria Alonso told the BBC that the company is working on diversity.

“You don’t get to have this kind of success if the entire world doesn’t see your product. So we are determined to have every one of those people represented in our films, in some way, at some point in time,” Alonso said to the BBC. “Now, we only make two or three movies a year, so it’s difficult to have every single one — but it is definitely one of the things that we have in our minds all the time.”