In twenty years we will look back on the post-Epsteingate era of comics the way readers today look at the post-9/11 era.
When talking about Epsteingate, a few facts are always on my mind.
One in five girls and one in six boys are victims of sexual abuse before the age of eighteen.
Across all ages, almost half of all women are victims of sexual assault.
For both of the above, the majority of perpetrators were people that the victims knew and trusted.
As for trafficking, Epstein trafficked some 1200 girls. The national human trafficking hotline claims to have identified 21,865 victims in 2024 alone, while their all-time statistic is in the hundreds of thousands. (Frustratingly, they separate the number of cases of sex trafficking from cases of labor trafficking, but list the victims only in aggregate. I thus cannot be sure how many of these victims were trafficked for sex, at least not by HTHL statistics alone).
From these facts, I think I can make the case that Epsteingate was not exceptional in its character. Sexual abuse and exploitation is not the sole purview of a select few. It is endemic to our culture, an inevitable fixture of an economy wherein the body is a commodity and there are classes of people who are culturally and socially denied the power to defend themselves.
But that's not the cultural reckoning we're seeing right now, is it?
This media spotlight could have been a launchpad to critique this element of our political economy. Instead, the new generation of opportunists, in accidental collaboration with their bourgeoisie, have rallied around the phrase "the Epstein class". Peddlers of the phrase will tell miracle stories of how this scandal is finally opening their rightist friends and family's eyes to the class the left rails against. But the phrase is only so readily accepted because it is bereft of meaning. The "Epstein class" is not united by its relationship to production. It is a category of person who commits a crime, namely child sexual exploitation. And everyone who hears the phrase maps onto it the sort of person they associate with that crime. Thus, the leftist opportunist says "the Epstein class" and means "the bourgeoisie," while the reactionary says "the Epstein class" and means "the fifth column of Jews and degenerates." (As always, the right's enemy is also not defined by its relationship to production). Which meaning will win out? Well, with every powerful person in the country scrambling to find a scapegoat for the scandal, I'm sure you can guess.
Thus, unto the fandom side of things. Following the cultural trend, DC's reaction to the Epstein shock repeatedly portrays the problem as exceptional and as arising from outside the culture. The other day, Supergirl premiered, and showed the titular superheroine defending Earth from sadistic aliens called the Brigands, who sustain themselves solely by defiling the women and girls of other cultures. Meanwhile, the ongoing Absolute line of comics depict a setting ruled by a shadowy cabal of wealthy elites. Joker in this setting tortures and mutilates babies to maintain his appearance in a beat-for-beat retelling of the adrenochrome harvesting conspiracy. That conspiracy itself is a modern repackaging of blood libel. Liberal cape fans are singing the praises of both of these works, calling them a shot across the bow from pop culture against the Epstein class. Which Epstein class? No doubt capital will make it out of this one unscathed.
I would love to see DC grapple with the sort of cultural reckoning I touched on earlier. I wish I could see stories really dig into how the commodification of women and children's bodies permeates the entire culture. Not because of evil foreigners or hidden elites, but because of the culture itself, because of the pressure toward dehumanization in everyone who desires a commodity. I wish I could see comics get into just how damn prevalent and unexceptional it all is — more people are sexually abused as kids than have blonde hair, for crying out loud. But it'll never happen. Would Eddie Berganza write that comic? What about Scott Lobdell? Geoff Johns? Warren Ellis, Jason Latour, Scott Allie? Would Charles Brownstein fight for the right to write it? Would the corporation that defended and promoted these men knowing damn well what they did, even having it on camera, publish it without watering it down until there was no message left? Would the millions of readers who are themselves guilty of this exact behavior look in the damned mirror and see themselves for what they are without pitching a fit and threatening the author?
No. Easier to make it a big spectacle and blame it on someone else.
