door:
I work in a comic book shop. Today a black woman I’d never seen before came in (neither the fact that she was black nor female are unusual for my store—it’s got an awesomely diverse customer base). She was looking for Afterlife With Archie, but stuck around to browse after I pointed it out.
Sometime later, she walked up with a small stack of issues, and while I was ringing her up, asked if I knew the name of a black superhero from way back. I suggested Black Panther. ”Yes! Does he have a comic?” I told her that although he was in a few titles, he didn’t have one of his own. But, I asked her, had she heard of Miles Morales?
She hadn’t. I grabbed the first issue I came to in the stack where his face was visible on the cover (#25, I think), and she positively lit up. ”The comic is all about him?”
“Yup!” I said, “and it’s great. One of my absolute favourites. If you want to start at the beginning, the first five issues are in a book.” I grabbed the first volume off the shelf, and she added it to her stack. After a moment’s hesitation, she looked back at the wall of issues.
"Can I get the first one you showed me, too?”
“#25? Sure, but…you might not really know what’s going on.”
“That doesn’t matter. I just want my brother to see it. He used to love comics, but he hasn’t read them since he was a kid. I want him to see this boy’s face.”
Representation matters. Diversity matters.
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