By night, Moriah Hummer dukes it out on the roller derby track as “The Original Skankster.” By day, she’s behind the comic book, Flat Track Furies, about a roller derby team that fights monsters.
Like her characters, the Unblinkable Molly Brown and Dora the Destroyer, the Fort Collins artist is tough, but some of the ugliest battles she sees are off the page. Sexism, racism, and homophobia are the new villains of the comic world -- but things are changing.
“I originally decided that I wanted all the main characters in my comic to be female and none of them to be men because I want women to realize that their stories are important, their stories have value, their opinion matters,” she said.
Hummer will speak about these issues and how they are being addressed at Denver Comic Con as part of the panel, The Dark Side of Fandom.
Interview Highlights With Moriah Hummer
On The Changing Face Of Comic Book Writers (And Fans)
“You’re seeing a lot more female writers, a lot more female artists, you’re seeing a lot more female creative teams, but it’s interesting because you also see pushback from a lot of existing fans. You see a lot of men talking about how upset they are that we’re ‘pandering’ to minorities and ‘pandering’ to women and ‘pandering’ to different sexual orientations. When really that’s probably representative of what the current demographic is.”
On Sexism At Comic Cons
“There are always people at cons that come up to your table and they’re looking through your comic and then they make some comments like, ‘This is, like, a cute story, but, like, why aren’t there any dudes in it?’ .... It’s been a boys club for a very long time in the comics and the gaming industry. I mean, if you went to a con 20 years ago - only dudes. Now that a bunch of people are kind of converging on this hobby, I think these men are feeling like they’re getting something taken away from them. Right? They’re saying, ‘We’ve been here for longer, and now you’re coming in and saying that we need different stories, we need to change the way that we do things.’ And that’s why you’re getting that backlash.”
On How To Implement Change
“The best way that we can keep this momentum going is number one: keep the conversations going. Challenge traditional characters, challenge why female characters don’t get the spotlight. And two: support those titles that are being released that have female characters or characters with minorities or characters with different sexual orientations. We should be buying those comics. Voting with your money is very important in the comic industry.”
