The death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk prompted a wide range of divisive comments online. One of these comments about Charlie Kirk, from a writer for DC Comics, led to their being fired right as their new series was getting off the ground.
The writer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, didn’t make any effort to make their comments subtle. Felker-Martin outright called him a “Nazi b*tch,” and even expressed their hope that the “bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk.”
Naturally, these comments prompted their own divisiveness online, and just as Red Hood went on sale. The first issue of the DC comic actually went on sale the same day that Charlie Kirk died, and as further noted by the outlet, it was canceled immediately after Felker-Martin’s comments.
Now, while speaking with The Comics Journal, Felker-Martin both stood by their comments while showing support for those who could no longer work on Red Hood:
“I had no regrets for what I said about [Kirk]. [Kirk’s murder] just didn’t strike me as an especially hot flashpoint. This is such a loathsome person. Everyone on the entire internet is talking about how pleasant it is that he got his.”
“I saw that he had died in the middle of spreading more of the bigotry that he spent his every waking moment promulgating, and in a way that he had advocated for others to die, and felt nothing but contempt for his life,” the writer continued. “I mean, this is a man who I’ve watched for years go on television and on enormous stages and convention halls and say that me and everyone like me should be stoned to death.”
Additionally, she notes that her comic being canceled shouldn’t have really been a surprise:
“I can only put it down to really just a moment of poor impulse control. Had I thought for another second, of course I would’ve known [that it would be a problem for DC], and naturally, as soon as I had said it, I did know,” Felker Martin said.
She also opened up about a call from DC Editor in Chief Marie Javins, who told her, “‘The story of the issue’s release had gone from being celebratory to something that DC and Warner Brothers couldn’t stand behind or defend,'” and that “any kind of promotion of violence or harm is unacceptable to them.”
“I said that I’ve listened to Charlie Kirk being an overt Nazi for years of my life, and I had no regrets for what I said about him,”Felker-Martin added.
As for DC Comics, they issued the following statement:
“At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints,” the publisher said in a statement on Thursday. “Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct.”
As such, we’ll have to see how this situation continues. The media has been handling Kirk’s death in all sorts of ways, and while it remains to be seen what the future holds, companies like DC and Paramount are doing their best to keep any fires from spreading.