By night, Moriah Hummer dukes it out on the roller derby track as 鈥淭he Original Skankster.鈥� By day, she鈥檚 behind the comic book, Flat Track Furies, about a roller derby team that fights monsters.
Like her characters, the Unblinkable Molly Brown and Dora the Destroyer, the Fort Collins artist is tough, but some of the ugliest battles she sees are off the page. Sexism, racism, and homophobia are the new villains of the comic world -- but things are changing.
鈥淚 originally decided that I wanted all the main characters in my comic to be female and none of them to be men because I want women to realize that their stories are important, their stories have value, their opinion matters,鈥� she said.
Hummer will speak about these issues and how they are being addressed at as part of the panel, The Dark Side of Fandom.
Interview Highlights With Moriah Hummer
On The Changing Face Of Comic Book Writers (And Fans)
鈥淵ou鈥檙e seeing a lot more female writers, a lot more female artists, you鈥檙e seeing a lot more female creative teams, but it鈥檚 interesting because you also see pushback from a lot of existing fans. You see a lot of men talking about how upset they are that we鈥檙e 鈥榩andering鈥� to minorities and 鈥榩andering鈥� to women and 鈥榩andering鈥� to different sexual orientations. When really that鈥檚 probably representative of what the current demographic is.鈥�
On Sexism At Comic Cons
鈥淭here are always people at cons that come up to your table and they鈥檙e looking through your comic and then they make some comments like, 鈥楾his is, like, a cute story, but, like, why aren鈥檛 there any dudes in it?鈥� .... It鈥檚 been a boys club for a very long time in the comics and the gaming industry. I mean, if you went to a con 20 years ago - only dudes. Now that a bunch of people are kind of converging on this hobby, I think these men are feeling like they鈥檙e getting something taken away from them. Right? They鈥檙e saying, 鈥榃e鈥檝e been here for longer, and now you鈥檙e coming in and saying that we need different stories, we need to change the way that we do things.鈥� And that鈥檚 why you鈥檙e getting that backlash.鈥�
On How To Implement Change
鈥淭he best way that we can keep this momentum going is number one: keep the conversations going. Challenge traditional characters, challenge why female characters don鈥檛 get the spotlight. And two: support those titles that are being released that have female characters or characters with minorities or characters with different sexual orientations. We should be buying those comics. Voting with your money is very important in the comic industry.鈥�
