The Color Barrier: A Series about Diversity in Comics; ComicBookResources.com, 2/6/14

Joseph Phillip Illidge, ComicBookResources.com; The Color Barrier: A Series about Diversity in Comics:

"When Jonah Weiland, the Executive Producer of this site, contacted me to head up a month-long celebration and discussion about diversity during Black History Month, a number of ideas came out of our meetings, but two of the most significant were these:

This is going to be a message of hope.

The discussion of diversity will encompass other groups in addition to Black creators.

Our goal is to provide a space in which we can contribute to the transformation of the discussion, to look at the past but focus on how it helped, and continues to inspire, today’s creators to produce new works, generate new ideas, and prepare for new entrepreneurial endeavors.

The discussion will include people from within and outside of the comic book industry, because comic books are one of the major food groups for global entertainment, touching many people’s lives through licensing and the indelible nature of nostalgia.

Your involvement in the discussion will help determine its impact.

Some of you may think the name of this "section within a site" has a negative connotation. The word "barrier" speaks to keeping something out or keeping something in, so it doesn’t apply to a mass discussion about inclusion and equality.

To which I say, "This is comic books. This is genre fiction. This is pop culture."

The worlds we create and admire, inspiring others to go beyond their self-conceived limitations, are not bound by physics.

We break through barriers of time and space every week.

We break through barriers of other people’s perceptions of us every day.

Barriers challenge and dare us to pierce their membranes and travel to other environments, some welcoming and others dangerous.

So here we go.

This is THE COLOR BARRIER.

Come back, and cross through to the other side.

After all, Luke Cage is leaving Harlem.

We need to talk about that."