Consider this a follow up to yesterday’s post about the fear and annoyance with Brian Michael Bendis writing Riri Williams when he has a clear track record of mishandling black characters.

Shortly after writing my post, I saw a series of tweets by Marvel editor Alanna Smith that really rubbed me the wrong way.

In the first tweet, one that clearly referenced Black anger and annoyance to BMB writing yet another Black legacy character in Riri Willams, Smith said that, “I strongly dislike the idea that people can only write comics starring characters that look like them. Leads to typecasting on both sides…”

She then followed the tweet with a big BUT (literally: “…BUT the industry always needs to do better and I’d love some recs of comics by black female creators. What are you reading/writing now?”) before moving into a series of tweets where she tries to explain her positioning…