Cancelled ‘Red Hood’ Series Writer Says Warner Bros. Demanded “A Groveling Apology” For Charlie Kirk Comments
In a moment that stands to test the mettle of even the most ardent of ‘anti-cancel culture’ advocates, now-cancelled Red Hood Vol. 2 writer Gretchen Felker-Martin says that while her public mockery of American conservative political pundit Charlie Kirk’s recent killing definitely caused questions for the series’ future, its abrupt axing was truly sealed by her refusal to honor DC parent company Warner Bros.’ demand for “a groveling apology.”
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 rapidly unfolding nature of the situation as it was, Felker-Martin did not personally comment on Red Hood Vol. 2‘s cancellation until the following morning, at which time they provided a public recollection of their past few hours to a currently unidentified Discord server.
Per an alleged screenshot of Felker-Martin’s statements, as published under their regular ‘Scumbelievable’ internet handle and provided to the public by Twitter user @diegetics, the writer recalled how just a few hours prior she had received a furious, frantic phone call from a Warner Bros. exec demanding that she offer an apology for her social media posts – a demand which she ultimately refused to honor:
“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 insight into her feelings towards Kirk on September 12th via a public post published to her Patreon account, the core of which is perhaps most succinctly explained in her closing two paragraphs:
“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.
“So, he’s dead. Our betters have rushed to mourn him and found us repulsed by their sentiment. Our enemies have discarded him as politically inconvenient in the wake of discovering his shooter’s political affiliation, with Trump briefly declaring his death ‘sad’ before steamrolling his interviewer to babble about the new White House ballroom, a sort of cathedral to the corporate wasteland of Cheesecake Factory aesthetics being built atop the bulldozed ruins of the famous rose garden, which is fitting, as that’s the world Kirk fought so hard to make.”
