REPORT: Marvel and Midtown Comics Cancel Sexualized Riri Williams Variant

But the important thing here is: how does J. Scott Campbell feel?

Source: CBR

Yesterday we reported on the controversial variant cover by artist J. Scott Campbell depicting Marvel’s new teenage black girl character, Riri Williams, who takes over the role of Iron Man in Invincible Iron Man. We also reported on the far more important fact that Campbell and fellow dinosaur Erik Larsen weren’t letting such a thing ruin their day, no matter what. You can catch up on all of that here.

One day later, Marvel and Midtown Comics, the store which commissioned the variant, have jointly decided to cancel the cover, according to a report from CBR (based on a better report from Jill Pantozzi on Hitfix), though the cancellation was reportedly first noticed by Action Lab co-founder Shawn Pryor.

…for the clicks, CBR.

Marvel also quickly rushed out some concept and interior art from series artist Stefano Caselli to show that they don’t draw Riri that way on the inside of the book (which of course makes doing it on the outside all the more confusing).

You know what these pictures are missing? Big bewbs.

For those of you concerned that this may have, in fact, finally ruined J. Scott Campbell’s day, never fear. After spending the previous 24 hours tweeting and retweeting completely reasonable, not-at-all-ridiculous stuff like this…

…Campbell reacted to the news of the cover’s cancellation with poise and humility, claiming that anyone who disliked the cover wasn’t “a fan”:

Campbell especially wanted to thank all of the fans who tweeted intelligent, thoughtful defenses of his work:

Don’t worry though. Campbell learned absolutely no lesson from any of this:

Yup. Nothing to be gained here at all. It isn’t as if he might have come to understand a different point of view, and perhaps even taken some feedback that could improve his future work and help it to appeal to a wider audience. We mean, it’s not like there’s a hashtag that conveniently collects a lot of that feedback together in one place and brought the issue to the forefront of discussion in the first place, or anything like that. No, it’s a total loss.

On the bright side, J. Scott Campbell is unphased, and will continue to draw the exact same woman he’s drawn over and over since the 1990s, and will dismiss any feedback that doesn’t validate his existing viewpoints. And Midtown will continue to sell the other variant, the one that Campbell simply slapped a suit of armor over but almost certainly got paid double for. And CBR didn’t have to say anything about any of it until they got the okay from their bosses at Marvel.

All’s well that ends well, right?

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