Very simply comics, like all of entertainment but in a much more squeezed down way, is a network of cliques overseeing employment.
There need not be sexism or racism at work when cronyism covers all bases.
Gerry Duggan is a friend of mine. We have tracked each other's writing careers and offered help when we could to each other over the years in various venues. there is many a studio and production company exec who got me singing the praises of THE INFINITE HORIZON, one of Gerry's (amazing) indie books.
At some point, right before or during ALL-NEW ALL-DIFFERENT MARVEL, my name came up as possibly taking over the BLACK PANTHER. The reason it came up was Gerry saying in some meeting, "Hey, Geoff's a killer writer, he loves and knows comics. Why have you not already called him?"
So, they called me. We know how that played out but it also allowed me to create MOSAIC
and have some fun with SOLO who now has, among other things, a child with his new ex lover, CATITA who is Afro-latin.
I would never have been called or allowed in the door at Marvel had Gerry, who'd built up cred there working on multiple successful books, put my name in play. Never mind that, at that time, I had multiple indie credits and four-part story in DARK HORSE PRESENTS that I could and did show to multiple editors at conventions.
As with the NFL, the writer is considered to be the team quarterback in comics, i.e. the "brain position." This isn't a slight against the illustrators who, on the whole, make considerably more than the writers and are, also on the whole, the industry rockstars. Just as the unspoken rule in football was, "blacks can't quarterback," or the rule in comedy "women aren't funny" held sway for, well, nearly ever, it's my suspicion (backed up by multiple conversations with writers) the view that "blacks can't write this stuff" was very much a dominant vibe.
Result? DC kept trying to hire my partner, TODD HARRIS, for his ridiculous art skills (something Hollywood pays him so much for neither DC nor Marvel comics can afford him to this day.) But they never bothered to read me. Never.
Know who did? Mike Richardson, founder and, at the time, EiC and publisher of DARK HORSE. I literally ran him down on the convention floor at SDCC, showed him a copy of the indie book Todd and I had made and watched him READ a chunk of it right there.
"You two did this?" he said. "Just you two?"
"Yep."
He offered us BOTH the Dark Horse deal on the spot.
A similar thing happened to put my name in front of Dan Didio.
In both cases, I was vouched for by high-level writers who were already "in the club." And then they checked my resume, and then they requested samples of my published comics. BOTH times. Even though, in one case I had literally run one hit TV show (the equivalent of being both head writer and EiC in comics) and was, at the time, second-in-command on another.
"But can he really write comics?"
Why did it take me so long to get into DC and MARVEL when I was burning up the ladder in a much more brutal profession (TV writing)? Even though croneyism is always at work in both branches of Entertainment, more money is to be made or lost in TV. No one is calling me to work on or promoting me on their show because I'm the black guy or because I'm somebody's pal.
Frankly, there's too much to lose, in TV, if I suck. There's nearly nothing at stake, money-wise, if a comic book fails to make its numbers.
Comics is shifting towards a more industry-proper model in that regard but it's working against nearly a century of racism, sexism, homophobia and, above all that, croneyism to get there.
Don't hold your breath.
The reason croneyism has stuck around this long is because, for the people it serves, it works very well.
We, most of us, just aren't those people.