‘Red Hood’ Writer Criticizes DC’s Firing Standards: “You Can Still Get Neil Gaiman’s Work Through Them”
In offering further thoughts on the recent ’emergency stop’ placed on her overall DC career, Red Hood Vol. 2 writer Gretchen Felker-Martin has criticized how the publisher was exceptionally fast to not just cancel, but fully recall the only published issue of her Red Hood Vol. 2, but did not offer a similar response to a number of other ‘uncouth’ creators.
As previously reported, Felker-Martin found themselves in hot water on September 10th after meeting the initial news of Kirk’s killing with mockery.
“Thoughts and prayers, you Nazi bitch,” she wrote to her personal, temporarily suspended Bluesky account. “Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk.”
A few hours later, local comic book stores across the United States (as it was the only country in which the book had been officially published) received a message from DC informing them that not only was Jason Todd’s latest solo series, which had just hit shelves that day, no longer moving forward, but that they would also offering full refunds-via-credit for both their remaining copies and those which they had already sold.
Pressed by multiple news outlets, including Popverse and The Hollywood Reporter, for details on the move, a spokesperson for the publisher simply stated, “At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct.”
The next day offering her first public comment on the fallout, Felker-Martin recalled, “It was surreal. I got a call from a WB exec at 10:30pm. She yelled at me! They did very much want a groveling apology.
“I told her I wasn’t going to apologize for calling a Nazi a Nazi, that he’d spent his life trying to kill everyone I love, and that I had no regrets.”
Felker-Martin would offer a lengthier dissertation regarding her feelings towards Kirk on September 12th via a public post published to her Patreon account:
“Kirk was funded by the country’s richest and most powerful, feted by president Donald Trump as the whip that kept the youth vote in line and worked them into a frenzy on Trump’s behalf. This gave him power. This made his words cut flesh and snap bone. There is no separation between Kirk’s rhetorical violence and the violence carried out on his behalf both by government apparatuses and by disturbed ‘lone’ actors whose sickness he gleefully stoked in hopes that it would burst forth into showers of blood.
“His hopes are now splattered across the backdrop of a gaudy little pavilion, under banners reading PROVE ME WRONG, but in his own sick language, Kirk was proven right. He seized power, used power, and effected great change in the world around him through the force of his desire for violence. He died as he lived, twisting statistics to lie about minorities in hopes that others would murder them on his behalf.
“Two days ago, I made a glib joke about Kirk’s death. It was irresistible to me. I had spent years smelling traces of the poison fumes he left in his wake, seeing his sneering face, his mouth full of teeth like baby corns and gums like congealed aspic. I stand by the sentiment of what I said. Kirk was evil. He can no longer hurt us, even if his cruelty will linger like a bad smell for decades to come. What I regret is that I didn’t take that cruelty more seriously in a moment when people were ready to discuss it, to unpack how violence is done, and why, and at whose behest.
“I have tried to make my own analysis of it here, to account for class, for race, for sexuality and political theory. I have not touched upon religion, but the perversion of Christianity by lovers of human suffering and brutalization has reached a fever pitch so deranged and terrifying that its influence on men like Kirk and his influence on it in turn should be self-evident to all.”
From there, Felker-Martin’s Bluesky suspension would lift on September 16th, whereupon she would offer her latest thoughts on the Red Hood-Charlie Kirk situation:
One thing I’ll say about DC not only canceling Red Hood, but recalling the first issue and refunding stores for buying it, is that you can still get Neil Gaiman’s work through them. They still work with Otto Schmidt. Eddie Berganza worked there for years AFTER the formation of a policy that no women were to be around him at any time for any reason due to his habitual sexual harassment and assaults.
“Frank Miller released one of the most savagely Islamophobic comics of all time, HOLY TERROR, and still works with DC. There are pedophiles, war criminals, confessed sexual predators on staff.
“You can still buy all their work. Being a rude, abrasive loudmouth while trans is the only unforgivable sin to these people.”
For those unaware of the specific cases involving the creators named by Felker-Martin:
- Gaiman was recently accused of grooming and sexual assault by a number of women, and is currently facing a related lawsuit from one of them. DC still publishes his Batman and The Sandman work.
- Schmidt drew a graphic propaganda comics on behalf of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. DC continues to commission him for cover work, his most recent gracing the front of this month’s Batgirl Vol. 6 #9
- Berganza was fired from DC in 2017 following numerous accusations of inter-office sexual harassment, prior to which the aforementioned ‘No women around’ rule was confirmed by Sensational Comics Vol. 2 writer Alex DeCampi. His run as an editor on a number of Superman-related titles, including Action Comics Vol. 1, Advenutres of Superman Vol. 1, and Worlds’ Finest Vol. 1, are still widely available in various trade collections.
- Miller, as noted by Felker-Martin, wrote and drew Holy Terror!, a post-9/11 anti-terrorism that presents both the War on Terror and the Islamic faith as cartoonishly evil. From The Dark Knight Returns to its third-sequel, 2019’s The Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child, Miller’s collected work remains a mainstay of comic book retailers.
While Felker-Martin did not provide any specifics as to the supposed “pedophiles” and “confessed sexual predators on staff”, it’s currently presumed that the “war criminals” include not just Schmit, labeled as such for his Putin propaganda piece, but also current DC golden boy Tom King, himself an ex-CIA agent who helped plan and facilitate America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
At present, neither DC nor Warner Bros. have offered a public comment on Felker-Martin’s above posts.
