Earlier today Chuck Wendig; Times Best Selling Author and writer of Shadow of Vader, announced that he had just been fired from Marvel with two issues left to write. He was also working on an unannounced Star Wars book. He was apparently told his social media was the reason the reason for his release. However the only problem with his social media is that it’s the target of a lot of harassment.
https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1050822080130895878
Wendig went into detail about the harassment he encountered around the release of Star Wars: Aftermath. Wending went on to state that the harassment has gone on for years at this point and the police have even been involved on numerous occasions. Wending eventually collected his thoughts in a single blog post for easier consumption. This firing comes on the heels of the mid production cancelation of Chelsea Cain’s Vision comic. You may recall that Cain was the target of much harassment during her run on Mockingbird.
But it does set a troubling precedent. One we’ve seen already – James Gunn, Jessica White, and so on – of folks fired because they riled up the wasp’s nest of asterisk-gate.
Marvel’s comic line of business has come under fire more frequently in the past year regarding personnel issues. Their current EIC pretended to be a Japanese writer. Not only is that in poor taste, it’s actually against company policy to be paid as a writer and editor. Fans and writers seem to be battling over social media more often these days and Wending seems to be the latest casualty. Overall fans and industry reacting negatively to this news. And as always with situations like this, there are people who wish they could speak up and simply can’t.
