Why true representation means Batman should always beat Captain Marvel in a fight

How social justice ate the nerd movement

The 2010s were, according to popular convention, a great time to be a nerd. Traditionally somewhat niche industries like adult video games and comic books were beginning to hit the mainstream. Tech companies were really starting to dominate business and some of the most high profile rich people were obvious nerds like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Teenagers were being told that if they wanted to get rich, they needed to study maths and learn to code. Franchise films were beginning to beat out traditional blockbusters as the highest grossing films, and every form of book, comic, video game or old TV Show seemed to be getting some form of adaptation. It was most certainly no longer uncool to take in interest in superheroes or science fiction, and increasing amounts of money were being thrown into media for classic nerd culture like Star Wars or Batman. “Hey, what did you make of the latest Ant-Man film?”, would say the lads down the pub. “Omg, I love Star Wars, I’m such a nerd lol” would say the Girls Who Were Not Like Other Girls. As far as it could be possible to be, it was nerd heaven. 

Arguably the Crown Jewels of the whole movement however was the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). In what is likely still the most ambitious cinematic project ever undertaken, the MCU consists of 34 films and and 23 series along (and counting), along with various ancillary media, which would collectively tie together into a single, cohesive and meticulously planned out narrative that would feature (almost entirely) consistent casting of characters, extremely frequent crossovers and cameos, adaptations of classic stories, and an incredibly interconnected yet cohesive plot. Furthermore, it was not simply some sell-out to existing mainstream tastes either - as a result of it having gone bankrupt during the 90s (ironically at the peak of the last time comic books went mainstream), Marvel had been forced to sell off the film rights to its three most popular groups (Spider Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four). As such, it was forced to resort to B-List characters like Iron Man and Captain America who, while popular with fans, were largely unknown to general audiences - this was, at least relatively speaking, authentic comic book Marvel. And yet general audiences turned in in droves, propelling disproportionate numbers of Marvel films to the list of the top grossing films of all time. This meant more films with even more fan favourites, which in turn led to even greater turnout and so even more funding and content. It was a superhero fan’s wet dream.

The apex of such an effort was in 2019, with the release of Avengers: Endgame. This was the grand finale to the (at that point) 22 film saga, and there was a lot riding on this - it needed to involve the culmination of hundreds of seeded plot threads, character arcs and audience expectations into a single satisfying conclusion (albeit one that would enable the continuation of the franchise afterwards). And hats off to them, that’s exactly what they did. Regardless on your thoughts of the oversaturation of IP, the supposed ‘death of originality’, or the artistic merits of superhero films, you have to admit that Endgame is a pretty stunning achievement in its ability to satisfyingly tie together ten years worth of moviemaking, and its position as the highest grossing film of all time (at least until Avatar got nudged back on top by the sequel) is arguably deserved. 

Given both the logistical and technical (if not entirely artistic) achievement of the film, along with the sheer cultural dominance of the MCU at the time, you’d expect a pretty solid run of ratings in the final run up to the finish line. However, there is one notable outlier here: although still grossing very well and having a 79% critical score, the audience score for the film is only 45%, with a pretty striking review distribution.

All is not well in nerd heaven.

Captain Marvel: A Review (Spoilers)

First of all, I’d like to make it very clear that I actually really enjoyed Captain Marvel. I thought the supporting cast were fantastic, the humour was good, the plot had some interesting twists and the 90s setting was a fun throwback. I’d go as far as to put it in the top half of my preferred MCU media - not quite as good as the likes of Winter Soldier or Loki S1, but a solid three and a half stars and a perfectly enjoyable way to spend your evening. 

I also don’t think the prior feminist critiques of the MCU prior to that point were entirely unjustified - with the nature of the MCU and the fact they were churning out 2/3 films every year, it is a little suspect that it took them this long to produce a female led one (although there has been Agents of Shield, Agent Carter and Jessica Jones in the TV show world). As such, I completely agree that this film represented the perfect opportunity to create a high quality female lead that could act as a figurehead for girls (particularly autistic girls) in the superhero world.

It is that part that is a massive shame, because if we’re being brutally honest, the lead character in Captain Marvel is frankly a massive b*tch. 

Again, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the movie, but by god do Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn carry that film hard. Carol Danvers spends the entire film being incredibly unlikeable, and it is only through the sheer charisma Nick Fury and Talos exude (and the alien cat) that this film is rendered entertaining and enjoyable rather than unbearable. Neither is this a criticism of Brie Larson’s performance - you work with the script and director you’re given, and as her performance in The Marvels shows (as well as all her non-Marvel projects), she is more than capable of delivering a far more entertaining and likeable version of the character if given the opportunity (although The Marvel too was carried hard by its wider cast - in that case, the legendary Iman Vellani shoulders the back pain with Samuel L. Jackson instead opting to simply sleepwalk through the entire thing in easily one of his most unimpressive performances). Even as it is, she is still able to carry the character through some humorous moments that sees the audience laughing with her (though never at her), and pulls off well the few moments that sees Danvers behave like an actual human.

Caveats aside though, Carol Danvers Mk 1 is just a massively unlikeable character. She spends the first part of the film seemingly as just a walking scowl with mild anger issues being told to be slightly less aggressive by a very forgettable Jude Law. However, upon crash landing on Earth in 1995 and meeting Nick Fury, she subsequently takes a turn for the self-satisfied; from that point onwards, she seems to treat everyone with outright disdain and condescension, takes every chance to patronise and belittle Fury and others, shows no appreciation or gratitude for any of the help she is given, and spends the entire film in a perpetual state of arrogant smugness. At no point does she ever have any comeuppance or criticism, nor does she ever apologise for her behaviour, and the film never really shows her failing at anything significant either. Far from it in fact - the film’s grand reveal is that everyone was apparently ‘holding her back’, before then proceeding to boost her superpowers to such an insane level that it essentially destroys the power scaling of the MCU so far. 

Possibly the most irritating part though comes at the end. The film gears up for a final showdown between her and Jude Law (surprise surprise the villain) as the culmination of her training. Instead she simply blasts him in the face and says “I don’t need to prove anything to you”. Now if they’d actually written her well, this could have been the perfect message to send to a potential female audience to this film! The story of a woman lacking confidence and who is constantly belittled by her peers, only for her to gradually realise she is capable and doesn’t need to rely on their approval, is one that would likely resonate with an awful lot of women and could have a genuine positive impact on the young and impressionable audience watching it. But we don’t get that. Instead, she is perfect from the outset, knows she is perfect from the outset, very aggressively tells others just how perfect she is, and the grand reveal is that she could be even more perfect if she didn’t put up with all these losers holding her back. That’s not empowering, that’s narcissism.

Now she does have a few moments where the creators suddenly remember that she’s meant to be the good guy here, and so let her be nice to someone for a change (or indeed allow Larson to make any expression except a scowl or smirk) however these are few and far between and only end up seeming out of character for her. Some may also claim some of my criticisms are unfair and show double standards about certain MCU characters - Tony Stark and Dr Strange are also both arrogant dickwads and yet nobody gives them s*** for it, and part of the point of her character is that she’s meant to be exasperated by operating on a planet massively behind on technology compared to her. However, the difference is, whilst an arrogant douchebag, Tony Stark is at least actually likeable in the way he does it (Robert Downey Jr. was arguably responsible for the success of the MCU to begin with), whilst Strange gets multiple comeuppances and eventually learns a degree of humility (and was never that great of a character anyway), and Rocket Raccoon also fulfils the “I’m surrounded by morons” character without making the audience hate him. It’s not like Marvel doesn’t have plenty of other great female characters either - characters like Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop, Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan and Pom Klementieff’s Mantis are all excellent characters with great depth. 

In sum then, we have a perfectly entertaining blockbuster movie masking the fact that an excellent cast, some decent gags and an enjoyable plot are having to work overtime to counteract the fact that its main lead is an unbearable alpha b*tch. How then did Marvel Studios, a studio at the peak of its power and usually excellent at writing characters, end up turning out something like this? For that, we have to look at the other thing going on in the late 2010s.

There has been an awokening

Whilst ‘nerd culture’ was apparently in the ascendency during the late 2010s, there was another movement increasing gaining traction online - left wing political activism. Fuelled by the dominance of social media, the increasing responsiveness of brands to public opinion, and by the millions of voices that cried out in terror, and then were compelled to Tweet with the election of Donald Trump, progressive movements were arguably also at the peak of their power from around 2017 to 2021. Movements such as #MeToo began to point out injustices for women, the increased LGBTQ+ representation would see mass migrations of many queer communities beyond Tumblr and into the mainstream, and whilst Black Lives Matter hadn’t hit the big time in 2019, many of the practices people associate with it (cancel culture, diversity requirements, aggressive anti-bigotry etc) most certainly had. 

With all this righteous energy the movement obviously needed somewhere to put it, and while there was a good deal of effort put into getting traditional corporations onside, to some extent this was difficult and complicated and required subject matter experience that the average person usually lacked. However, one place that was very visible and easy to engage with was the media - not many people understand the intricacies of the banking industry, but everyone can see how many #StrongFemaleCharacters had been cast in the latest Transformers movie. As such, Hollywood essentially became a central battleground for the movement, with particular attention being paid to casting decisions and how particular characters were written.

The net result was that all of a sudden, there was significant pressure on mainstream movies to be diverse and representative in a way that was much more pronounced than it had been previously. Whereas before Hollywood could largely get away with a token female and black character each for a film and then call it a day, now such decisions were placed front and centre, and everything was rigorously scrutinised to ensure it wasn’t ‘problematic’. The MCU, being arguably the centre of culture at this point, was no exception, and suddenly the lack of a black or female led Marvel movie was beginning to stick out like a sore thumb. Hence, the two most prominent results of this were thus Black Panther and Captain Marvel, the two films arguably most designed the most around these sorts of values, although it’s important to note both a Black Panther and Captain Marvel film had long been in the works before this and would have been released regardless (both are extremely important characters in Marvel even leaving aside the ‘woke value’). 

Black Panther was released first to widespread (and very deliberately vocal) acclaim by critics. I personally found the film to be perfectly enjoyable if nothing special (although both the score and costume design were top tier), and whilst I hate to cast a shadow over a film worthy of praise for being the arguably one of the first Black and African led action blockbusters to really go in on these things in a positive way, I do wonder if the Academy will look back on its decision to nominate it for Best Picture (in the same year as Roma no less!) in a few years time and wonder whether it had gotten a little bit overexcited.

More relevant to this piece though is Captain Marvel, and it is here that the lead character’s somewhat questionable characterisation begins to make a bit more sense. One of the primary focuses of ‘woke politics’ was the need for good, strong female representation - rightly or wrongly, the argument was that there weren’t enough powerful women in action lead roles, and those that were are unfairly sexualised. As stated before, in this one the MCU is kind of guilty here - it would take 20 movies before it would release a true female led one, and it’s first female superhero (Black Widow’s) introductory scene does include a (brief) shot of her in her underwear, along with another one later in the film, something Captain America never had to put up with. Whoever was going to pick up the slack then needed to make a fair bit of a splash.

Fortunately, Hollywood has a solution - the #Girlboss. A strong, confident, independent woman who kicks arse, is extremely competent, and doesn’t take no s*** from the men in her life. Unfortunately however, that also describes almost every single other female Marvel character so far. How then to make her unique? One option is growth - have her start out as insecure and lacking confidence, and then have her gradually become more sure of herself. However, this is 2019, year of the She-ro (because everyone apparently forgot heroine was already a term) - they couldn’t possibly risk having her appear as less competent than those damn men, or as, god forbid, a damsel in distress. The solution then: have her start out as even stronger, confident-er and independent-er than everyone else, and by the end of it, have her turn into a f***ing god. #Empowerment!

For all Carol Danver’s obnoxiousness may be a product of the excesses of the late 2010s however, like I said, the movie is still perfectly enjoyable even with her horrible personality and insane power scaling. Besides, Hollywood is no stranger to awful writing - after all, why write people when you can write cliches instead? What was it about this film then that made is so uniquely triggering to certain groups of people?

The politics of reclamation

You see, when it comes to Captain Marvel, the self-consciously progressive attitude was not confined to the late 2010s backdrop. Back in 2018, when doing an interview over the film A Wrinkle in Time (a completely separate Disney children’s film unrelated to Marvel), Brie Larson brought up her frustrations with the overwhelmingly middle aged, white, and male critics that made up the bulk of the movie reviewing industry. "I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle in Time," said Larson. "It wasn’t made for him! I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color."This I’m sure we can all agree is not an unreasonable statement. Whilst everyone is entitled to critique and form an opinion on every movie, some 40 year old bloke in a suit is obviously not in the target audience for such a film and so isn’t going to be the best judge of its success on its own terms, and the film critique industry could do with more diverse perspectives (not least from people who aren’t going to write off all animation as immature).

However, internet media being what it is, this statement began to start to be warped. Rather than being about the children’s film A Wrinkle in Time, it instead started to become about the then upcoming Captain Marvel film, and rather than being about film critics, the statement morphed into “I don’t need some straight white man watching this movie. It wasn’t made for them! The only people whose opinions matter are women and people of colour!”.

The result was a rather nasty internet flame war. Social media began to be filled with outraged Marvel fans, offended that they were being told they weren’t welcome in their own franchise. Opportunistic content creators were quick to jump on the issue, fanning up further flames of outrage in order to drive traffic to their channels. Brie Larson herself was subject to large amounts of awful internet abuse by people who apparently were able to take the time to send rape threats, but were unable to perform basic fact checking. Meanwhile, certain fans began to participate in a system of pre-emptive ‘review bombing’, whereby they would mass spam negative reviews on Captain Marvel before the film has even released, driving down the ratings of the film on Rotten Tomatoes and other sites and leaving the film with the insanely skewed review distribution it has now.

Many people were not taken in by this, and fact checks swiftly started to appear debunking the fact Brie Larson had ever said these things. However, the progressive community was not going to take this lying down, and began to fight back. Positive reviews began to flood back it to prop the numbers back up (bearing in mind this film hadn’t even released yet). Brie Larson was immediately elevated as a symbol/martyr to online progressive feminism, and her critics were decried as misogynists.

However, certain parts of the progressive movement (most likely those who also hadn’t bothered to fact check whether Larson actually said those things), began to look at what she had said and wonder whether or not she had a point. The film industry, particularly the superhero film industry, has afterall been heavily dominated by exactly the straight white male patriarchy that Larson was supposedly decrying. The comic book industry was even more so, and had been almost the entire duration of its existence - some of what was being churned out in the 90s by Image Comics and other publishers was so comically immature in its sexualised depictions of women that is may as well have come with a ‘parents, keep out’ sign for your fourteen year old to stick on his door while he’s knocking one out to it.

Consensus began to emerge that the problem wasn’t that Brie Larson was being taken out of context, the problem was that Brie Larson was right - Captain Marvel isn’t for straight white men. It was about time that women and other minorities did reclaim the superhero industry, one they had historically been excluded from by the same straight white male patriarchy that has discriminated against them in everything else. Captain Marvel should just be the start - it was about time all superhero comics should start to be open, inclusive and empowering to women and minorities. And if men don’t like it, they can go cry into their straight white male privilege, and enjoy the countless other industries they still dominated in. Sorry lads, but Brie’s right: This film just isn’t for you.

At that point then, the answer seems obvious - the backlash to Captain Marvel comes from pathetic misogynists who can’t handle the fact that their male privilege is being threatened by female superheroes. The future is female, and superheroes and comic books no longer belong to them. 

Well, is that the answer? Who are these people who comics apparently no longer belong to?

The real story of superheroes

There is a minor debate in the comic book historian community over how to classify the different ‘ages’ of comic books. Should there be a ‘Platinum Age’ of comics consisting of the pre-pulp newspaper drawings like Krazy Kat? Did the Silver Age begin in 1954 with the publication of Seduction of the Innocent, in 1956 with the creation of Barry Allen, or in 1961 with the Fantastic Four? Should everything post-1985 be lumped together as a single ‘Modern Age’, or should it be split apart, and how?

One thing everything agrees on however is the precise date of the start of the Golden Age of Comics: April 18th 1938. It was that day that Action Comics Issue 1 began to hit newspaper stands, and would represent the first ever appearance of an iconic hero: Superman.

Most people tend to be familiar with Superman’s origin story - an infant, sent from the dying planet of Krypton, crash lands on Earth and is adopted by a pair of farmers. They raise him, and as a result of Earth’s yellow sun (Krypton’s was red), he develops powers of flight, super strength, invulnerability and others (things vary by story and author - the 50s and 60s in particular were a pretty wild time). He then uses these powers to fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way for a Better Tomorrow! While not necessarily the world’s first superhero depending on your definition, Superman was certainly the first one to introduce and popularise the concept to general audiences.

But fewer people know the true origins of how Superman would be created. Born in Ohio in 1914, Jerry Siegel had a tough childhood. His parents were both Jewish immigrants, having fled Russian annexed Lithuania to escape antisemitism, and his father would be killed by a shoplifter when Siegel was 18. Throughout his childhood, both as a result of his immigrant status, social awkwardness, and nerdy, bespectacled nature, Siegel would be severely bullied at school. However, whilst a high school, he would find a kindred spirit in Joe Shuster, a similar nerdy and similarly bullied Jewish immigrant who shared his love of science fiction, adventure and movies. Unlike Siegel, who had been trying his hand at writing but had little artistic talent, Shuster could draw, and the two opted to team up to produce their own comic strip.

They would produce various ideas, however there was one that would particularly stick with them. Both would continue to be bullied, and this would inspire them to create a character who might be able to fight back. Like them, Superman was an immigrant, and frequently felt like an alien amongst his peers, but unlike them, he had superpowers that meant he could fight back against the bullies, and protect others going through the same thing. The two had great fun writing the strip, and after endless attempts, were eventually able to persuade National Comics (who would later morph into DC) to publish the character. The rest is history.

A similar story occurs around Batman. Bob Kane, another Jewish immigrant, would end up meeting struggling writer Bill Finger. Initially, the showy Kane and the quiet Finger would work well together, birthing the creation of Batman and seeing them recruited by the now Detective Comics (DC). However, Finger’s quiet nature and social difficulties with DC’s management would see Bob Kane take over the management of their relationship with the company, one which he would ultimately abuse to present himself as the sole creator of Batman. Finger would eventually die penniless and alone as a result of this betrayal, but his legacy lives on: Batman has now become an icon to socially awkward nerds needing a role model, and after a campaign from his descendants, DC has now restored his name to its rightful place as co-creator of Batman.

Comics history is full of these stories of socially marginalised people creating these remarkable characters. Wonder Woman was created by William Marston, inventor of the lie detector and famed feminist author, forced to live in secrecy with his two female partners lest their lesbian relationship and three way marriage be found out by society. Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, two more Jewish men who sought an outlet to protest against the ongoing genocide of Jewish people in Europe and sought to mobilise public opinion against the Nazis through a symbol to bring the country together. Other great comic book authors include Chris Claremont, Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman, all of whom would report feeling isolated and alienated from their peers.

Comics have also long represented an outlet for stories around marginalised groups in society. Spider-man was created as the typical nerd, bullied during the day, but then able to don his costume and escape into the world of crime fighting. The X-Men would long be made as an allegory for oppressed groups fighting for their rights, be it in the 60s when they were explicitly modelled on the Civil Rights movement, or in the 80s where they were designed to serve as a symbol in support of the gay rights movement. Meanwhile, DC would devote an entire publishing arm to Milestone Comics in the 90s, an imprint explicitly devoted to amplifying marginalised, black voices who were not being heard in other forms of media. 

Finally, the place where the appeal of comic books and superheroes to the marginalised and socially awkward has shined the most has always been the readership. For almost as long as the genre has existed, science fiction, fantasy and superhero stories have been associated with the awkward, the nerdy and the weird. Such people would be usually (but most certainly not always) straight, usually (but most certainly not always) white, and usually (but most certainly not always) male. But one thing they could almost be guaranteed to be is socially alienated in some way, and almost all of them were likely autistic or otherwise neurodivergent.

So what we’re really saying is that comic books have long been the preserve of straight white autistic men (along with a healthy number of autistic and otherwise alienated people who were not straight or were not white or who were not male). So when our new pet progressives are really turning around and say “Superheroes are no longer for you”, these are the people they are really addressing.

Nerd heaven?

“So what?” progressive movements may argue. “Sure, maybe back in 80s nerds were getting bullied for watching sci fi and liking superheroes. But now we’re in the 2010s, the decade of the nerd, where Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are paraded as role models, there’s billions to made in male dominated IT, and superheroes and sci-fi are not only no longer uncool, but they are actually celebrated. As a straight white man, everything is built for you, so you should just f*** off back to the rest of your privileged existence and give the rest of us real marginalised communities the chance to enjoy superheroes for once.”

And right there is the fundamental lie of the 2010s - that life for weird nerds is suddenly wonderful now, and that because most of them are straight, white and male, they must somehow be rolling in privileges. The reality is that this is far from the truth.

First of all, the notion that nerds are suddenly rolling in cash is obviously total nonsense. For a start, founding a billion dollar startup generally requires a good deal of talent and intelligence, and while almost all of society’s hyper-intelligent individuals are weird nerds, that obviously does not automatically mean they are all at Einstein levels of intelligence - the criteria for this blog post is that they are socially awkward and extremely interested in ‘nerd culture’, not that they are overly intelligent. Furthermore, it isn’t like intelligence automatically offers someone an instant ticket to fame and fortune - this is almost always a result of a combination of luck, connections, opportunities and having the social skills to convince people what you are selling is worth it. There’s a certain irony to insisting that the intelligence of nerds is automatically applicable to becoming wealthy and popular, given the exact same people who insist this will likely also insist that there’s no way billionaires have earned their wealth and it is all through luck and exploitation. In sum, pointing to Elon Musk and saying “look, nerds are succeeding” is going to mean very little to the 30 year old still living with his parents and who struggles to hold down his job at the local supermarket because he can’t look customers in the eye.

Neither is it the case that being privileged in your sexuality, gender and ethnicity is automatically going to confer success. One quirk of the way the progressive movement talks about privilege is that it leads to the impression that if you are straight, white and male, it means you automatically have a good life handed to you on a plate. I’m not quite sure what they imagine - maybe some limousine rolls up, with a white suited chauffeur beckoning to take you to your magical straight white male mansion where you suddenly miraculously get everything you want. Funnily enough this isn’t the case - whilst they arguably are still just about benefits to being these three things (albeit ones that are rapidly declining), they will almost never occur in such a way that is visible to those who are. Insofar as these traits do confer privileges, it is more through the absence of additional obstacles rather than any direct leg-up - a man is privileged because there is a woman who has probably had to do everything he did with the additional constraint of misogyny, not because there is some corporate headhunter ready to swoop in and give him his magic man job. Nor are these privileges the be all and end all - despite whatever institutionalised misogyny she may claim exists, the rich heiress is still likely to have an easier time of it than the deprived working class bloke, and identity traits simply make up another part of the puzzle in the complex networks of people’s advantages and disadvantages. Hence, an appeal to straight white maleness is also not likely to make up for an individual’s nerdiness, not least because they can see for themselves how they are increasingly having said advantage eroded by diversity quotas. 

This brings us to the biggest lie of all - that because ‘nerd culture’ is now popular, nerds are having an easy time of it. This speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding in how bullying works - that somehow people are bullied because they like Star Wars or read comic books, and now that everyone does, these people are treated nicely. Sure, maybe for a few yes-men and tagalongs going along with the crowd and looking for a shorthand for who to pick on this is the case, but for most people this gets things the wrong way round. People are not bullied for reading comic books, rather, reading comic books became a useful signifier for people who were always going to be bullied anyway. 

Human beings are unbelievably cruel creatures sometimes, and none more so than the young. Be it the physical jabs from the boys or the verbal ones from the girls, most people have likely experienced some form of abuse during their adolescence, and conflicts both within and between social groups is common. However, there is something that unites the disparate social groups that form the neurotypical community in a way that’s almost instinctual. It’s almost like they can smell it; maybe an odd intonation or strange interest, maybe it’s the ill-fitting clothes or fact they brought a suitcase instead of a rucksack, maybe it’s the uncool comics or the jokes that just don’t quite get it, maybe it’s the unnatural posture or the strange fidgeting. The signs vary and there’s no harm and fast rule, but there’s one thing for sure - there’s certain people in life who just seem to carry a sign that says “Bully Me”.

I’m not talking about being called the odd mean name, or not being invited to a particular party, or even being knocked about a little bit occasionally over a falling out. I’m talking bullied. As in, dreading coming into school, spending spare times hiding in the library or bathrooms, having everyone hurl abuse at you at every possible moment bullied. These are people who not only have no friends, but they likely never even had a compliment or positive interaction with a peer. This isn’t “I haven’t got a girlfriend”, this is “The only female interactions I’ve ever had are them telling me how much they despise me”. This isn’t “The class clown makes a joke at my expense”, this is “I have to carefully plan my route back home, because if the lads catch me they’ll beat the everloving s*** out of me for daring to exist”.

If these people are lucky, they’ll find similar souls and band together - it’s harder to pick on groups, and at least that way they get some sort of companionship. These are your stereotypical nerd groupings you’ll find in any community and who are frequently the perfect targets when people are looking for a group punching bag. Usually though there’s at least one that doesn’t manage this, and you can be fairly sure that their life will be a living hell. This person will likely be the butt of every joke, subject to all manner of cruel ‘pranks’, and will be abused and shunned by everyone, often including their fellow nerds themselves, desperate to engage in the same signalling as their cooler peers (and also hoping to take some of the heat off their own backs). No amount of straight white male privilege is going to help you when your sole interaction with society is it telling you you are a universally despised worm whom everyone would love to squish into the pavement if they thought they could get away with it, not least when many of the people telling you this are probably the exact same people sanctimoniously Instagramming about this stuff anyway.

Once again, these people come from all sexualities, ethnicities and genders - human beings are remarkably equitable when it comes to cruelty. However, the one thing that unites all these people is that they will be weird. In the past there have been all sorts of ways to direct abuse at someone’s weirdness, with being from the less privileged gender, sexuality or race being ample reason, however in the modern day society has largely agreed that it isn’t going to do that anymore. The one thing it doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo about however is autism.

There remain all sorts of reasons why someone may tick the ‘weird’ box well enough to warrant bullying, but autism is generally the crown jewel. As a form of neurodivergence it is practically tailor-made to produce weirdness: stiff posture, deep interests, taking things literally, social awkwardness, the list goes on. Furthermore, unlike other disabilities, it is often subtle enough that it won’t warrant direct acknowledgment - while people would almost certainly love to bully people with physical disabilities or more severe mental conditions like Down's Syndrome too (and still frequently do), the former is usually obvious enough that social disapproval against ableism kicks in and the latter usually comes with supervising adults able to defend them, whereas autism is frequently undiagnosed and so fair game.

There is also a gender dynamic at play - on average, women are reported as autistic less frequently than men. This is partly due to ingrained bias on the part of interviewers still imagining the nerdy stiff young man (BPD diagnosis rates would almost certainly crater if the numbers of misdiagnosed autistic women were corrected), however it is also a factor of the ingrained social pressures on women. Many autistic women are subconsciously taught to mask their autistic traits, and so can come across as ordinary neurotypicals to the untrained eye - bullying rates for autistic women are lower correspondingly. Numbers of autistic people are also lower from minority ethnic backgrounds and sexualities - however this has nothing to do with dynamics (Autistic people are arguably overrepresented in the LGBTQ+ community, particularly the trans groups, on account of their lack of adherence to social norms), and instead smaller minority autistic populations are simply an expression of smaller minority populations overall (they’re called minorities for a reason). This once again means however that by far the most common autistic person, and so the most common victim of bullying, is the straight white man.

And sure enough, such cases of bullying show up strongly in the statistics. A staggering 94% of autistic people report bullying, with a continued 87% reporting it on a weekly basis and 40% being bullied daily. Compared to the just 15% of neurotypicals who report daily bullying, this is a pretty substantial difference. Such a difference also carries through elsewhere - autistic people report higher anxiety, higher depression and are 55% more likely to commit suicide than neurotypicals. Life expectancy for UK women is 82 years (higher for minority ethnic groups, at least in the UK), yet for autistic people it’s only 75 years (and that’s for those without severe mental impairments). Where the f*** are our marches?!

This brings us all the way back to our starting point - namely that most neurotypicals have the bullying point the wrong way round. People are not bullied because they like comic books, they are bullied because they are autistic, and bullied severely so. It just happens to be that autistic people like comic books more than the average, and so for a long time when comic books were uncool, liking comics and being bullied were synonymous. However, one shouldn’t delude themselves that now that comic books are in vogue again, that these people’s lives have meaningfully improved - all this means is that now, the guy kicking the s*** out of them is wearing a Deadpool shirt too.

So in sum, this ‘Nerd Heaven’ is one in which these people’s career prospects are still s***, they still have to suffer through the endless social games of employment, and they still spend their days being bullied to suicide by their peers, only now, they apparently have ‘straight white male privilege’ so don’t even get the right to complain about it. Far from being an expression of their expansive ownership of everything, comic books and superheroes are now all these people have. And now the b*stards want to take that from them too.

How to steal someone’s safe space

Played by the impeccably cool Samuel L. Jackson, sporting a badass eyepatch and trench-coat combo and somehow winding up with all the best lines, Fury is an icon of the MCU.

It was his post-credits scene in Iron Man that arguably birthed the conception of a cinematic universe in the first place, and many films had built up his mystique as to his backstory - “Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye” was an iconic scene from Winter Soldier. So when a younger Fury was shown to appear in Captain Marvel sporting both eyes, fans were pretty excited - perhaps the backstory legendary line was finally going to be revealed. Was Captain Marvel this person, or was it someone else? What would it take to get this legendary badass to take an injury like that?

Flash forward (or indeed back - the film is one giant MCU flashback) to Captain Marvel proper, and following a harrowing escape from the villains near the end of the film, Fury is sitting in a shuttle playing with Lovecraftian horror/cute kitty cat Goose. As they play, Goose turns around and scratches Fury in the eye, which he shrugs off. In a later scene however, it turns out the scratch got infected and he has now lost vision in his eye, requiring him to find eyepatches (he of course lies about this to his subordinates, claiming an epic battle). Turns out Fury, the MCU’s biggest badass, lost his eye to playing with a kitten. 

Personally at the time, I didn’t mind this - I like the character but have no real connection to him, so I found the reveal to be another one of the silly little gags Marvel films are known for. However, there are an awful lot of people who do have a connection to the character. These are people who have followed his story ever since the 60s (back when he was depicted as white), who would have avidly followed his definitive appearances in Ultimate Marvel, where he was depicted in Jackson’s likeness for the first time (this is actually unauthorised initially, but being a comic book fan himself Jackson said he was fine with it so long as they promised to let him play him in any movie they made - a deal I think we can all be pleased about). Until Black Panther was released, Fury was arguably the MCU’s most prominent black hero - there were an awful lot of people for whom this character meant quite a lot to.

Cut to this film, and how is he depicted? As a bumbling beat cop, to be belittled and condescended to by our Lord and saviour Captain Marvel, who is clearly far more competent and brilliant than this sad loser. The man spends the entire film being the butt of jokes, with him having to struggle lamely against individual aliens whilst Captain Marvel solos entire fleets. And to top it off, that badass backstory about trusting people? Turns out that was just him playing with a cat - no grand backstory, just a throwaway gag to appease the general audiences who had no idea what a ‘Kree’ was before they stepped into the cinema. 

There is an unfortunate habit in Hollywood whereby for a character to be depicted as strong, they must therefore be shown as s***ing on another, existing character. Now, I don’t mean to be funny, but if it was my favourite hero who was being subject to extreme character assassinations such as the one that happened to Fury, then I’d be f***ing livid too. Nor is this approach happening in isolation - as we have seen, this attack on a beloved character is coming hand in hand with the MCU’s desire to promote #Girlpower to general audiences, and so have a strong female character dominate in order to do it. These nerds may be socially awkward, but they aren’t stupid. They know this belittling of their own favourites is happening as a result of Marvel’s desire to seem progressive, yet whenever they point this out, they are simply referred to as ‘misogynists’, who are ‘afraid of seeing a woman in a position of power’.

A similar pattern would play out in Star Wars. The film arguably considered to be the trigger to the modern ‘woke backlash’ of online communities was Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. Said film was directed by Rian Johnson of Knives Out fame (although this hadn’t been released at this point), and seemed to pretty much set out to break every convention in the existing saga. Now, similar to Captain Marvel, I actually quite enjoyed the film, finding it a flawed but still fun romp in a galaxy far far away. However, my enjoyment of the film is almost entirely derived from the fact that I have little to no emotional attachment to the character of Luke Skywalker - had the film’s depiction instead been of Ahsoka Tano as a washed out reject beyond her prime, I would have gladly joined the army of keyboard warriors seeking to eradicate this film from existence. The fact is though, much like with Nick Fury, there are many people who do still have Luke Skywalker as their hero, and for these people this movie isn’t exactly a fun watch. Luke Skywalker is depicted as a pathetic, dejected hermit having abandoned the Jedi way, and instead opting to live a solitary life and leave the Galaxy to its fate - this is then contrasted with Rey, an eager young female scavenger hoping to be a Jedi and who just happens to be an expert pilot and a brilliant mechanic and a natural force user and an expert fighter and and… 

As it stands, I wouldn’t say things were as egregious as Captain Marvel - Luke still gets his badass moment at the end (albeit in a way more muted than it could have been), and whilst Rey may be a bit of a Mary Sue (a fanfic term meaning a usually female character who just happens to be amazing and perfect at everything and so requires no growth), her personality is nowhere near as abrasive as Carol Danvers. However, the fundamental narrative was still the same - beloved nerd hero is depicted as a useless loser in order to make a female character, obviously planted to appeal to the (previously sneery) progressive people, look good. And sure enough, that p***ed people off! Cue the enraged tweets declaring the Last Jedi as ‘woke nonsense’, the enraged counter-tweets declaring anyone who dislikes it a racist misogynist, the bullying of several actresses off social media and the further descent of yet more nerds down the alt-right pathway because at least they don’t treat male characters like trash.

At the beginning, the MCU was probably a wet dream for many nerds. The opportunity to see all your favourite characters on the big screen, in an interconnected universe just like how the comics are, and then to see general audiences absolutely lap it up must have initially felt like vindication for the communities who had historically been made fun of for this sort of thing. However, as comics and superheroes became more mainstream, they began to enter the eye of progressives, and neurotypical women have yet to meet a medium they couldn’t co-opt as a means of social signalling. Suddenly, the world of comics and superheroes - the one refuge for people whose lives are otherwise utterly miserable - is now under threat from the very people responsible for making their lives hell in the first place, and who have already taken over just about everything else.

It starts with Marvel pushing for increased diversity in its films - cool, you think, maybe this means we’ll get a live action Mile Morales or an Avengers/X-Men crossover. But then these diverse characters start slowly mocking and emasculating your own beloved characters - it’s a bit harder to enjoy Captain America when Black Widow is constantly making snide remarks at his expense. Before long, you’re witnessing entire character assassinations of the people you aspire to be by characters who look and sound exactly like the sorts of people who treat you like a cockroach in real life. This dream is rapidly turning into a nightmare. Your favourite YouTubers are now telling you that Marvel is planning on retconning the comics entirely to rid it of ‘male privilege’, and now all male characters are simply going to be servile side characters whilst they devote all the attention to ‘strong female characters’. And the feminists are not only not pushing back on this, but they are agreeing with them! “You deserve to have your comics taken away from you, because you are a straight white man and so are evil”. F*** yeah you’re going to fight back!

Because I can tell you, there are few things more deeply enraging, then to be told that Captain Marvel is being “reclaimed” by people who don’t even f***ing know Carol Danvers isn’t the first to hold the title, and who would make fun of you for telling them this!

(Credit webcomicname)

In the last year or so there’s been a slew of think pieces asking why young men are turning to the right in increasing numbers. “Could it be a lack of role models?” people ask. “Maybe it’s just too much time spent on social media/Netflix/video games/[insert whatever popular medium the author finds distasteful]”. “Perhaps it’s just an inevitable backlash to the loss of male privilege and the fact it’s harder to get a girlfriend now”. 

Well I can’t speak for the neurotypicals, but I can tell you that autistic people sure as hell weren’t getting girlfriends before either. The reason why there’s been a shift in autistic men to the right is simple: the left is coming to take your stuff, and the right is going to make them stop. 

One of the consequences of the left’s near domination of the cultural and academic spheres (often at the expense of the economic and political) is that it allows them to get away with a measure of snobbishness about media. Contrary to the claims of many Social Justice Warriors, most media is in fact made for neurotypical people, including their gay, black and female varieties - this breadth of choice thus allows them to be a bit more picky. The result is that many left wingers (outside the Tumblr community, which has its own problems) tend to shy away from the deep end of nerddom - after all, they’d really rather not have to read your s****ty, Wotsit-stained, misogynist little 90s comic written by someone who spent all their employee’s wages on baseball memorabilia, and illustrated by some guy who can’t draw feet. In contrast however the right is more than happy to listen to you infodump on why a throwaway line in X-Treme X-Force #69 means that Deadpool’s button combination in X-Men Origins is wrong, and when you finish they’ll then tell you it’s all the fault of the gays and immigrants and that voting for a far right party will fix it.

There are consequences for this as well - not just for the left’s own electoral chances, but also for the very people the left is supposedly trying to help. When egged on by the right content, it is very easy to get yourself to the point of extreme paranoia surrounding ‘wokeness’, to the point where any remotely diverse depiction is suddenly evidence that progressives are here to take your action figures away. This has led to perfectly innocuous films who just happen to have a black female lead being review-bombed alongside, and means some of the most radicalised are increasingly making the same demands of comics that resembles those of the very KKK that Superman himself was punching back in the 50s. Given the neurotypical stranglehold on other forms of media, this is unlikely to have an enormous impact - for all people are claiming “Go woke, get broke”, these groups have yet to have much of an impact on the film industry outside of their own niches. However, gay, black and female autistic people do exist as well, and these people deserve superheroes too. 

And if you leave it to the right wingers to be the only ones to address this disaffected and hurt community, then sooner or later this is going to happen too.

A new approach

So what’s there to do about it? Well for a start, the problem is resolving itself to some extent. After its peak in 2020/2021, the woke movement now seems to have subsided somewhat, and most people at this point seem to have removed the black hearts from their social media and requested people quietly forget some of the more embarrassing things they were calling for a few years ago. Twitter has also been tanking under Musk’s leadership and things are only looking like they are going to be entrenched with the splits between X and Bluesky; this too reduces the possibility of a mass-seeming movement making demands on large companies to make changes in the manner of the 2010s. The sum total of this is that now their casting decisions are not being analysed under an angrily tweeting microscope, studios have a bit more room to breathe and are no longer under quite as much pressure to perform to activists.

This reduced pressure does not translate into a lack of a threat however - all it takes is a quick look at latest debacle over the Jaguar rebrand to see that companies are still just as capable as before of making stupid decisions in order to appeal to ‘woke audiences’, and that consumers are just as willing to kick up a fuss when a beloved brand is taken away from them (the irony is that Jaguar’s rebrand will likely also p*** off the very people it’s clearly meant to recruit - LGBTQ+ people want to be suave supervillains just as much as the rest of us). It’s also clear Marvel hasn’t entirely learnt its lesson - both Falcon and the Winter Soldier and She-Hulk featured some incredibly ham-fisted writing in both real world politics and gender politics respectively, and Secret Invasion went even further in the character assassination of Nick Fury and was rightfully panned across the board for it.

The solutions here are two-fold - for the left to do a much better job of outreach, and for Hollywood and publishers to learn to write superheroes better. The former is worthy of a slew of posts in its own right, so for now I’ll focus on the latter. Ideally we could just expect media companies to learn their lesson and take their own steps to improve things, however as shown before this isn’t necessarily a reliable process. With that in mind, I’d like to propose a system based on something that Hollywood is very familiar with - the diversity checklist - albeit with a nerdy, power-scaling spin to it.

The question of ‘who would win in a fight?’ is one of almost religious significance to the nerd community, and countless man hours have been devoted to this issue. In a lot of ways, you can think of superheroes as football teams (of the soccer variety you filthy yanks) - each fan will have their own that they support, and the success and failures of one vs another becomes a vivid emotional experience that they experience alongside their characters. Should their interactions with a new character be handled badly, this can lead to exactly the visceral reactions we’ve seen previously - imagine the backlash against women’s football if feminists forced men’s teams to be drugged and humiliated by them in the name of promoting women’s sports. Do it right however, and it can make the introduction of new characters much easier to swallow - “Yes, we’re introducing Captain Marvel and yes she’s powerful, but don’t worry - Iron Man and Spider-Man could both kick her arse still when it comes to it”. In this way, the power scaling of a character can essentially help ‘balance’ a universe and ensure existing fans aren’t being thrown under the bus in favour of new ones. 

Now, attempting to set a total top-to-bottom version of this is obviously going to be both impossible and counterproductive - fans have been debating this stuff themselves for decades, and some people are always going to prefer Blue Beetle to Green Lantern and vice versa. However, to return to the football analogy, whilst leagues will remain in flux and fans of different teams will continue to engage in friendly (and not so friendly) competition, there’s one thing that everyone agrees: when the time comes, you get behind the national team. Likewise, whilst it wouldn’t be a good idea to try to spell out the hierarchy of every character in a given franchise, one thing you can do is decide who is going to be at the top, and ensure your choice is ultimately one that all of your fans can still feel a connection to. “Yes, there may be ups and downs for particular characters and new and diverse ones may come along, but make no mistake: in this world at least, autism always wins in the end.”

The question at that point is who should fulfil this role as the ultimate powerful autistic figure within each world? Now, I’m sorry to all you Marvel fans who have been enjoying the MCU focus, but at this stage, I’m not sure Marvel has an obvious single candidate. In the past, this would have been Spider-Man, who in the 60s was written to be relatable in exactly this way, however these days he seems to be be so universally popular within the Marvel universe, have so many people fawning after him and be so socially adept and beloved that I’m not convinced he is a worthy centrepiece - for neurotypical men maybe, but not autistics. Iron Man similarly has his own character baggage that undermines his suitability, and Captain America is a little too America-centric (and frankly bland and socially adept) for him to work either. If anyone does have any suggestions as to a Marvel choice for this, please do comment them below.

However, if one jumps over to Marvel’s superior cousin DC (yes I will fight you over this), the choice is obvious. What we are looking for is a character already central to the franchise, with a relatable backstory to the average nerd (no spontaneous development of powers or anything), one established to be incredibly competent, particularly in intelligence (the trait most nerds are usually best at) but is nonetheless socially awkward with his peers, who has precedent within community discourse for being able to beat everyone in a fight, and who ultimately could constitute a worthy symbol for the autistic community to unite around. I think you are already aware of who I am thinking of:

There are many other points to be made about Batman arguably already being autistic, as well as ways in which his backstory can be cleaned up a bit to fix the few remaining stumbling blocks. I also recognise there are questions over the extent to which an unbeatable dude can facilitate good storytelling - I would still strongly contend that they can, and will make a future post at some point dealing with all of these issues. Finally, I also don’t think this should be the be all and end all of power scaling - in the much the same way that women, LGBTQ+ and ethnic minority fans form a smaller but still important part of the western autistic community, the second and third spots on the power scaling chart should also be reserved for their representatives. For LGBTQ+ people this is arguably baked in to existing setups- both DC and Marvel have been pretty chill about representation in this area for decades, and I’m a big believer that all characters should be considered pansexual by default unless you are specifically going to make a plot point about it. Women and ethnic minorities potentially want something more substantial however - for women there is a very obvious candidate in the form of Wonder Woman, who is almost as well suited to the role as Batman is to his (plus WonderBats is objectively the best partnering for both Batman and Wonder Woman). For ethnic minorities this is more of an open question, I’m personally quite partial to Mister Terrific, but I also recognise the reaction of 95% of the population to him is “Mister who??”. In any case, feel free to give your own opinions on any of these things.

Overall though, I think as a first step, ensuring Batman remains on top of the superhero hierarchy remains a good way for comic books companies and Hollywood to show that, regardless of where we take things, we will still keep the autistic people for whom this is their lifeline at the centre of the superhero world.

 And if your response to this is outrage that a straight white man should be considered at the centre of the superhero universe then I’m sorry, but superheroes simply aren’t for you.