Today Marvel Comics fired Chuck Wendig, the New York Times-bestselling author of several Star Wars novels and comic books. He was removed from the Star Wars Shadow of Vader comic project and a second unnamed series that was in development.
Wendig revealed his firing in an epic 29-tweet thread. Ironically it was apparently his Twitter account that did him in—Wendig said his editor fired him “because of the negativity and vulgarity that my tweets bring.”
In the tweets in question, Wendig (an outspoken liberal) railed against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He said Kavanaugh and the people who supported him were “callous fucknecks, prolapsed assholes, grotesque monsters, racists, rapists, wretched abusers and vengeful petty horrors.”
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Conservative media personalities like Ben Shapiro, Dinesh D'Souza, James Woods and Curt Schilling pounced on Wendig over this rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1048962033130123269
https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1049241648633450497
But Wendig was a controversial figure among Star Wars fans long before these tweets. He introduced the series’ first major gay character (an Imperial deserter named Sinjir Rath Velus) in the novel Star Wars: Aftermath.
The toxic Star Wars fandom that Observer has previously reported on immediately pounced. They flooded Aftermath with one-star Amazon reviews, pronouncing the characters lame and writing that “I’ve read more interesting assembly instructions for IKEA products.”
Rather than being cowed by this criticism, Wendig tried to beat the trolls at their own game. When a group of rogue fans claimed they would remake The Last Jedi, Wendig said they should make Luke Skywalker an incel and Chewbacca a robot.
Marvel (which publishes Star Wars comics) and its parent company Disney have taken a harder line on employees’ use of social media in recent months. James Gunn was fired from the Guardians of the Galaxy series in July over offensive tweets (he’s now writing Suicide Squad 2 for DC).
Last month the company also cancelled The Vision, a comic book series which was to be written by bestselling novelist Chelsea Cain. Like Wendig, Cain (the author of feminist comic book Mockingbird) is vocal about her political views on social media.