#Comicsgate: How an Anti-Diversity Harassment Campaign in Comics Got Ugly—and Profitable

In July of 2017, five days after the death of groundbreaking comics publisher Flo Steinberg, a group of Marvel Comics’ female staff went out for milkshakes to celebrate her legacy. One of them, Heather Antos—at the time an assistant editor at the company working on The Unbelievable Gwenpool—snapped a selfie of the group holding their sweets and posted it on Twitter.

What followed was akin to a feeding frenzy. According to a vocal contingent online, Antos and the Marvel Milkshake Crew were “fake geek girls,” “social justice warriors,” and “tumblr-virtue signalers,” the sort of people who were ruining the comics industry by their very presence. “The creepiest collection of stereotypical SJWs [“social justice warriors”] anyone could possibly imagine,” one user tweeted. Musings on Antos’ sexual availability led another to write, “Better have her sign a consent form, she looks like the ‘false rape charge’ type.”