Culture

Marvel’s New Editor Is Under Fire For Pretending To Be A Japanese Writer (Yes, Really)

It's being called out as "real-life yellowface".

by Meg Watson  30 November 2017
Cebulski

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Happy Marvel day! The first Avengers: Infinity War trailer is lighting the internet on fire and oh wait, hold up, the rest of the company is in turmoil after a supremely cooked scandal involving the new Marvel editor-in-chief.

This week it was revealed that the new EIC and definite White Man, C.B. Cebulski, spent a portion of the early 2000s writing comics under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida. The news was broken by website Bleeding Cool this week, where writer Rich Johnston laid out the long backstory of this weird saga.

Yoshida had been a mysterious figure in the comics world. Though he worked on big series including Thor: Son of Asgard, X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, and Wolverine: Soultaker, he was reluctant to enter the public spotlight beyond faceless interviews. A rumour grew that Cebulski (then Associate Editor at Marvel) was behind the work, and he repeatedly denied it in the media.

That is until speculation started to grow again this week:

After the above tweet from Image Comics Brand Manager David Brother roused a new round of questions, Bleeding Cool reached out to Cebulski again, and he finally confirmed the rumour.

“I stopped writing under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida after about a year,” he said. “It wasn’t transparent, but it taught me a lot about writing, communication and pressure. I was young and naïve and had a lot to learn back then.

“But this is all old news that has been dealt with, and now as Marvel’s new Editor-in-Chief, I’m turning a new page and am excited to start sharing all my Marvel experiences with up and coming talent around the globe.”

Hmmmmmmmmmm!

While people writing under pseudonyms isn’t usually a huge deal (it often happens so writers can get around exclusivity contracts), the racial nature of this one is really the main point of contention. Cebulski wasn’t just using a pen name to write stuff on the side, he was writing as Yoshida to employ a voice and identity that was not his own.

The comics he wrote during this time were heavily inspired by Japanese style and culture, and during interviews “Yoshida” frequently spoke about his fascinations with manga.

This news is now causing a huge backlash on social media, with many calling the practice out as cultural appropriation and “real-life yellowface”.

This, of course, isn’t a new topic for the company to contend with. Last year Marvel also faced massive backlash about Doctor Strange and Iron Fist, following the respective casting of Tilda Swinton and Finn Jones.

Swinton portrayed the Ancient One, who has previously been a Tibetan man. Though Jones’ character had always been a white man, fans were disappointed in what was seen as the continuation of what’s widely described as an Orientalist story.

The practice of white writers taking Asian pen names is also a weirdly common one. Many authors and poets over the years have masqueraded in this way, simultaneously propagating Orientalist culture and potentially denying actual Asian writers opportunities to having their voices heard.

One of Cebulski’s colleagues has since come to his defence, claiming the new EIC “very much associates with Japanese culture”. Sana Amanat (who is Pakistani American) described Cebulski as “globally minded” and vouched for him as “very culturally sensitive as well”.

Other creators have also claimed Cebulski has helped many Asian people in the comics industry over the years.

Make of that what you will, but one thing’s for certain: this is a pretty shit way to start a new job.