What Eve L. Ewing’s Career Trajectory Tells Us About Black Women’s Place in Mainstream Superhero Comics

On March 14, Marvel Comics announced a splashy new path for X-Men comics, revealing three titles coming this summer. Of the three, I’m most interested by the story Marvel comics writer Eve L. Ewing will co–pilot about three new young mutants mentored by Kate Pride and Emma Frost alongside artist Carmen Carnero. I am not a long time fan of X-Men comics, but I am a long time fan of Eve L. Ewing’s writing. Her career trajectory is one of great interest to me, as it underscores her prowess as a storyteller across genres and reflects the changing readership and fandom of superhero comics. But it must also be contextualized within the larger shifts in Marvel comics’ Black writers over the last decade. Ewing has now twice been hailed—perhaps prematurely—as the first Black woman writer to undertake major Marvel projects. In 2023, Marvel announced Ewing would write an ongoing Black Panther run, making her the first Black woman to write on an ongoing Black Panther solo title. Nnedi Okorafor later reminded comics readers that she was in fact the first Black woman to write Black Panther for a limited series, Black Panther: Long Live the King, in 2017-2018. Now, Ewing is being hailed as the first Black woman to usher in an X-Men series. 

Discrepancies over whether or not she is aside, the fact that we are still heralding “firsts” in the comics industry in 2024 is not something we should necessarily be proud of. During a promotional interview for Black Panther in 2023, Ewing told TODAY Show producers being the first “doesn’t mean that you were the first person worthy of the responsibility; it just means that you were the first person to get a shot.” Ewing here highlights the fact that being the first take on these projects is a reflection of systemic exclusions and erasures in the industry. The question should be framed: why are we still having “firsts” today when we regularly celebrate how far we’ve come? What does this say about the makeup of the industry up to this point, and what were the conditions for all of the Black writers who came before? In many ways, the juxtaposition of Okorafor’s erasure from Black Panther’s legacy and Marvel’s lauding of Ewing illustrate a perpetual issue Black women in all industries: you either get to be invisible or hypervisible. The lack of interest from Marvel in correcting the framing of this issue reveals to us the company’s priorities and how they invest in who gets to be the “face” of the first.

While colorism may add texture to the conversation about the gendered racism Ewing and Okorafor face as comics writers in the Marvel world, both have experienced misogynoir as a result of their writing. In the wake of her first comics series, Riri Williams: Ironheart, in 2018, Ewing and fellow Black Panther writer, Evan Narcisse, penned a piece for The New York Times in which she detailed some of the hate she received. The first paragraph of the piece read: 

“My Twitter notifications were a garbage fire. They said I had no talent, that I was a harbinger of everything that was going wrong in the comics industry. Some of them used coded language like ‘forced diversity.’ Other messages, like a simple image of a burning cross, were more direct.” 

The misogynoir becomes apparent when considering the trajectory of Ewing’s comics career alongside a contemporary like Ta-Nehisi Coates. Misogynoir, a term coined by Dr. Moya Bailey in 2008, to refer to the specific racialized misogyny Black women experience, colors the way I view Ewing’s jump from short comic run to short comic run, never getting series longer than twelve issues and perpetually writing more niche, Black and often young characters. Ewing went from Riri Williams: Ironheart, a Black teen heroine from Chicago created by a white artistic team in 2016, to the short lived Champions: Outlawed, which features Marvels newer teens of color on a superhero team. From there, she bounces to Monica Rambeau: Photon, Marvel’s first Black women superheroine with a decades long history, and then to the solo Black Panther run, Marvel’s first Black superhero. Now, she will write a teen team, with notable canonically white characters such as Kate Pride and Emma Frost, as well as a diverse cast of new characters, on Exceptional X-Men. 

To be clear, based on her work, she likely took on these projects with deep intention. Ewing has had a long career as an educator, currently working as a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, and prior working as a public school teacher. Her academic work centers public school closures in Chicago (Ghosts in the Schoolyard, University of Chicago Press, 2018). She has written a middle grade novel about a young Black girl from Chicago who loves science (Maya and the Robot, Kokila, 2021). She is undeniably a youth advocate, especially marginalized youth, and has prioritized Black girlhood in particular across most of her writing. However, I do believe that this particular investment can be and is weaponized against her by Marvel, even as younger readers value these messages.

A writer like Ta-Nehisi Coates has a similar political slant in his approach to comics. A journalist and cultural critic by trade, Coates brought a pensive, philosophizing energy to T’Challa during his run of Black Panther. His characterization of the Wakandan king gave us a figure akin to a modern day Hamlet with his long soliloquies and ruminative narrations about governments, the people they are meant to represent, and what happens if monarchs are not responsibly representing them. Coates’s first Marvel project was Black Panther, and after a long running and well received series, moved to tackle Captain America, a huge title in Marvel Comics. Though it’s worth factoring in the length of Coates’ run, which shows a deep investment on the part of the company, it’s still worth noting that he is able to make one move and immediately lands on the Captain America creative team. Ewing’s path takes many more stepping stones to get to a title somewhat comparable to a Captain America; even on X-Men, she takes on fewer and less widely beloved characters. 

There’s also an interesting pattern of credentialing that is occurring amongst Marvel’s Black women writers. Ewing has been counted as the fifth Black women writer in Marvel’s more than eighty year history. It’s worth noting that up to Ewing, at least three of those Black women writers hold Ph.D.s: Roxane Gay, Nnedi Okorafor and Ewing herself. Yona Harvey holds more than one advanced degree. While many of us may be inclined to view the pattern as incidental and perhaps something to celebrate—after all, it shows the versatility of Black women’s writing and our ability to extend the questions of our scholarship into other forms—I also must wonder if this is more insidious. We must ask ourselves: why has the goal post appeared to move for Black women? It’s not enough for us to be talented writers, we must in some ways be overqualified and highly credentialed just to get in the door. And when comics have a longstanding reputation of not being serious literature, one must wonder: why, then, is it becoming commonplace for Black women writers in Marvel comics to be highly decorated. Coates isn’t credentialed in the same way; and this is not an irreverent respect for Ph.D. holders as some sort of better-than-everyone-else positioning, but rather an observation that merits questioning.  

To be clear, this is also not a commentary on Coates’ writing abilities or whether or not he deserved to write Black Panther or Captain America. Instead, his career merely offers a point of comparison for what Black women in the industry must do. And either way, I am a fan of Coates’ writing, as I believe Ewing is as well. Structural questions are never necessarily reflections of any one individual but indicative of what any new Black women writer might experience trying to break into mainstream superhero comics. 

This is also not to say that Coates experienced an easy ride from Black Panther to Captain America. In the same New York Times article where Ewing outlines the hatred she got for Ironheart, she cites a conversation in which Coates forewarns her of the vitriol that comes with being a Black writer in the comics industry. When he moved to Captain America, Coates penned a series of essays for The Atlantic thinking through his decision to take on the project in the face of much scrutiny and ire. 

In moving from a series of characters who are niche in race and age to a legacy team that is diverse, but still largely skews white, Ewing’s writing will reach a more mainstream white comics fan base. The fact is, white, and older, readers may often go to a comic book store and reach past Photon or Ironheart or even Black Panther; but X-Men is not a title many long time readers will pass on. The nostalgia will trick them into picking up a title by a Black woman. And while this is a win in some ways, it’s one that makes me very afraid. The hate Ewing got for writing a new Black girl character who many folks had never even heard of is one, very particular type of  rage; the hate she is liable to get writing on a legacy team will be widespread and pervasive. 

And yet, Ewing still appears to find immeasurable joy in the complicated industry of comic books as a Black woman. As more eyes find her and her work, it is my fiercest hope that she is protected. Yes, I hope that she finds her readers and she gets to connect with her audience, but more than anything, I pray that she is covered in her commitment to storytelling. I want better for Black women artists. I want them to be well supported in their endeavors and able to tell their stories in peace. Eve L. Ewing is not the only Black woman artist I wish this for; I wish this for us all. But because she is responsible for some of my personal favorite stories in comics, I make sure to pray a little extra, just for her.

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Ravynn K. Stringfield is a writer and scholar based in Virginia. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Catapult, Shondaland and midnight & indigo. Her debut young adult novel, Love Requires Chocolate, debuts on August 20, 2024 from Joy Revolution, an imprint of Penguin Random House. For more, please visit her website, www.ravynnkstringfield.com, or follow her on social media: @RavynnKaMia on X and Instagram; @RavynnStringfield on TikTok.