Comicsgate
 

Yeah, I know I know, this thread is "stirring the pot", only no, it's not. I'm shocked at what I'm reading on Twitter.
Guess I've been out of the loop.

I've been reading tweets from both sides, and I'm stunned by the ferocity and hatred. Creators and "fans" are at each others throats, with black lists and secret groups and mantras like #movetheneedle.

What happened? How did this happen? WHY is this happening?
Trying to get a better handle on where all the hate stems from, maybe people can talk out their positions here, without getting into blowouts.

The comics community is in trouble. BIG trouble.

Like all things ending in the suffix -gate, it's just unbridled entitlement.

Is it? I don't understand the hate. i just don't. Where does all of this come from? Why are guys like Vegital-san and Sumac so angry? They seem to be part of a growing wave of hatred for women, and the LGBTQ community.

Guy's? Real talk. Why so much anger? I really don't think you need a dick to play ghostbuster, do you?
It don't make sense.

Peopel write crappy SJW comics. Customers get mad. Creators tell customers they're pixels that don't matter. Customers revolt.

Customers are always right in the end.

But see, that doesn't explain anything to me. "People write crappy SJW comics". What does that even mean? Why is it crappy?

I really don't get it. Can you give an example of why you think a comic is crappy?

All I care about is having decent comics to read every month, and the only Marvel series I followed last year was unceremoniously cancelled in the wake of all this. The LCS in my neighborhood also closed due to the sales slump.

Why do people feel such a

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/79/ff/0b/7...im-do-want.jpg

to politicize every aspect of the comics industry today?

Superman beat up corrupt people, punched Hitler and kicked KKK's ass. Captain America punched Hitler, abandoned his America moniker and became Nomad when he was disillusioned with the US government. Kirby was ready to fistfight bigots who took offense when he drew Cap kicking Nazi ass. Black Panther writer was nagged by editorial to include more people which resulted into the Black Panther vs. the Klan arc. Most of Gerber's work.

Superhero comics have always been about politics and especially about social justice. And that bother bigots who now have a more vocal medium to whine on compared to a pre-twitter age where hatemail would either be trashed or get a snark Stan Lee reply in the letter column.

Then there's the entire run of the X-Men and their various spin-off titles.

EDIT: LOL The answers above mine were way better.


What was the book that was cancelled?

Or the Batman comics, which tell us that the rich are better than us at everything and we should just punch mentally ill people well.

I understand the arguments about the political basis behind some of those classic arcs and such, but those were competently told stories by creators who valued their craft as a means of direct cultural discourse. They believed in the intellect of their audience and the possibility of persuading them towards a more tolerant attitude, rather than talking down to them about what terrible racists/sexists/homophobes they are.

Also, there's a big difference between a snarky letters page reply and the pure autism that manifests on people's Twitter feeds--for both creators and the fans.

People have opinions. Nothing new.

Sometimes, I'm thankful just being a dude who buys some comics and nothing more.

EDIT:
Well... I passed on the most recent Ghostbusters mini-series inspired by the new movie in part because some of the creative team was linked to this debacle. And also due to the fact that I just don't care for the new movie characters.

Agreed.
Which is why I used the term entitled. It covers both the fans who believe they're owed a certain kind of story, as well as the authors/creators who believe we should be thankful to be gifted a particular kind of story.

That said some of the things I've seen levied at creators reads more like they were penned by her:
https://media.giphy.com/media/rpRmBGR3xaAZa/giphy.gif

I assume we're talking about Marvel? They're generally not crappy, people just paint them that way because they don't like what's going on for other reasons I won't mention. The problem, I think, is Marvel deciding it would be a totally rad idea to replace f***in' everybody at near the same time.

To run it down, at the moment, the list of the replaced are, off the top of my head, so it's not complete: Iron Man, Thor, Ghost Rider (though, to be fair, Ghost Rider changes hosts like we change underwear), Hulk, Wolverine and until recently Captain America. Marvel's always had the catchphrase of being the "House of Ideas" but in the past two years it's felt like they're the house of "one idea". The replacement storyline. I like that in spurts - it's aged and long as hell, but I still get a kick out of Knightfall and Superior Spider-Man is probably in my top five favorite Spider-Man runs/series - but not all at once. They don't have the excuse of "legacy" and "passing down" DC used to use.

Though I've always liked Amadeus Cho and enjoy his antics as Hulk, from what I've read, more than a lot of Banners, so that was always fine with me.

There's also a dearth of big name writers there, these days. A lot of the big names they had propping themselves up for years and directing the universe - Fraction, Hickman, Brubaker, etc. - packed bags and left for creator owned. Hell, Bendis just left. They've got Jason Aaron and their stalwart mid range names like Pak and Waid and that's about it right now. So interest's kinda waned.

Yeah, that's never getting any better. Barriers of interaction are gone, so anyone upset about a story can just go yell at the person responsible on social media. You get enough of them and then, surprise, the creators get sick of fans. Happens in plenty of other forms of media too, from music to books to TV. It's a downside to social media, but that genie's not going back into the bottle.

Not to say some creators can't just be @$$holes, though, but you either take it and enjoy their work or leave it.

Supermans very first issue was literally him roughing up corrupt senators trying to start a war in South Africa to force a confession, coming to the aid of a woman getting abused by her husband, rescuing Lois Lane from a gangster she rebuffed who didn't take it well, and so on.

Captain America and Hitler punchin' was a couple of Jewish mens reaction to a war America wasn't even in yet and seemed like it wanted to stay out of.

I'd agree with you and go so far as to say it's in the very DNA of comics.

The most sense I've been able to figure is that "fun things" for the most part are "supposed" be a "boys only" club... :roll: If it's fun and/or cool, it inherently belongs to males (or so some people would like to believe); of which girls will ruin by being any part of it. (At least not in a way that isn't pre-approved and titillating.) :trolleye:

That said though, I'd rather new inclusions (awesome ones) vs gender swaps. (i.e. Next generation of Ghostbusters vs reboot.)

The thing is, I've never seen any of that Twitter/4Chan level of toxicity in any of the actual comic shops I've visited in either of the two cities I've lived in over the past six years. I've even met owners and clerks with neon dyed hair and hipster glasses who looked like your stereotypical "Tumblr in Action" types, and they were always civil to me.

If someone picks up an issue of their favorite comic and they find they don't like the script, the art, or the creative direction, guess what? They can drop it from their pull list until it improves or they find something better. Caterwauling and harassing someone on Twitter doesn't stop terrible stories from getting published. Refusing to purchase or read those stories does that.

Those "Diversity & Comics" or "Capn Cummings" types of people who have made a career out of b*tching about "muh SJW Marvel" on Twitter and YouTube are still buying all these books they hate in order to show how bad they are in front of a webcam. There's a certain irony there...

Where's the passion? Where's the joy? These characters may serve an allegorical purpose from time to time, but at their core superhero stories are supposed to represent escapism and fun. Reading "God Loves, Man Kills" isn't supposed to be the same experience as reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel.

Maybe the echo chambers of the Internet have imbued both creators and fans with a false sense of self-importance. While both sides of this so called debate whinge about free speech and tolerance, it's hurting and shrinking the industry as a whole.

DC seems to be trying that right now - and it's the form I prefer for a multitude of reasons - but I also understand why the other way is employed, because historically it can be really tough to get people attached to new characters no matter how well they're written.

The industry has been shrinking for a long time now, it's not really a new phenomenon based around recent attitudes. Mark Waid will even tell you he was ringing the alarm bells about that in the late 90's. They've yet to really figure out a solution to the problem. Digital will likely help a lot in the future, but growth has been too slow for it to take over as the primary platform any time soon or as a way to grow the business. That one's going to take time.

Exactly.
There were tricks the industry used in the past that aren't working the same way they did before, because the market has changed. The fanbase has changed.

All of those things are good things, but the growing pains are very real and very noticeable.

Sorry, barking at the wrong tree, little flea.
I don't hate women and LGBT, only small subsets of the latter who are attacking women and generally act like religious zealots.

As for comic books - receipt for success and to calm down fragile "progressives": create new characters, instead of replacing old one for "token minority of the year" and find good writers to write compelling POC / LGBT characters, not ham-fisted parodies with horrible dialogue and the like.

And we were doing so well.

Hey man, you started the thread. :lol:

I left Twitter for the most part about 6 months ago and stopped following the geek news sites. So I haven't really been privy to this until the last week or so.

Instead of reading about the comics industry, I've just been (gasp!) reading comics. I particularly like the current Mister Miracle series.

Same. Though I do admit to keeping a very well curated twitter.
The thing is, this isn't a particularly new song though. I heard it when they made Jaime Reyes the new Blue Beetle. I'm sure there was a rendition of it in 1974, when they replaced the X-Men with Different X-Men.

The tune ain't new, and it's not like it's been anything other than mediocre.

Apparently, there was a lot of hate mail sent to the Marvel offices back in '82 when Spider-Man got his black costume, which, ironically, was the result of a fan sending Marvel his idea for it by mail.

I know, I KNOW hahaha.

It's not bad, there were some great books this year. I'm loving Maestros right now. It's a lot of fun.

So, I thought it was worth looking over. These are the names on the blacklist, the ones that regressives are having a problem with.

Andy Khouri
Alanna Smith
Heather Antos
Tom Brevoort
Ales Kot
Aubrey Sitterson
B. Clay Moore
Dan Slott
Gabby Rivera
Gail Simone
Jennifer de Guzman
Kelly Sue DeConnick
Kurt Busiek
Larry Hama
Magdalene Vissagio
Mark Waid
Matt Fraction
Max Bemis
Nick Spencer
Sina Grace
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Tim Doyle
Zachary Davisson
Andrea Shockling
Colleen Doran
Jamal Igle
Marissa Louise
Ramon Villalobos
Tess Fowler
Kelly Fitzpatrick
Tamra Bonvillain
Triona Tree Farrell
Alex de Campi
Amy Chu
Christopher Sebela
Justin Jordan
Kirk Perez
Paul Allor
Ryan Ferrier
Ulysses Farinas
David Brothers
Kieran Schiach
Rich Johnston
Jude Terror
Joseph Glass
Matt Santori Griffith
Stephanie Cooke
Colin Spacetwinks

I also saw a poster today, of Black Panther, badly photoshopped to be holding a watermelon. It also wasn't called Black Panther anymore. I'll let you fill in the blank yourself.

So damn sad.

I'm amused that G. Willow Wilson isn't on this list.

This list is about 5 days old. It's been expanded apparently.

Mark Waid, Dan Slott and Brevoort are real pricks to people in general, even if you aren't a "regressive".

I noticed his name in your signature. What's that about? Do you know each other?

From personal experience? Or that you've heard?
I can't said as I've met the latter two, but I've met Waid, and he was nice enough to me.

Of course, I met him socially...and not when we were opposite sides of a table.

I never cared much for "It's ironman, but they are black." Just like I wouldnt want an asian Black Panther, I don't care much for change of characters outside of live action (Eastern heroes like the Space Sheriffs are okay since that's the whole point of Transformation heroes)

I want more original heroes. I on't want a black batman, I want an original black superhero, that is better than using a hero's name to sell a new character.

Like I get that a previously established title would have a better chance to sell then a new ip. I'm not mad that they do this, I just wish we were in a position to do it better.

Granted, I'm a huge manga reader. So literally about everything I have read stars non-white people so the race thing is a mute point.

How has the fanbase changed? Im not saying it hasn’t. I’m just not up to date on these things and would like to know what you have observed.

We were friends on Facebook, but I was critical of some comics he wrote and he gave me a dressing down for it. Then I started hanging out with Doug Ernst's blog and he really lost it. I was the one who unfriended him because he was planning to rat me out publicly.

Brevoort's openly admitted online that ticking readers off is what makes them money, and we should "take our medicine". Waid has threatened people over on Twitter for disagreeing with him and held a private chat room with other writers (also on the blacklist) to beat up or intice one of the comicsgate bigwigs at a convention.

Now I feel entirely out of the loop.
The hashtag has bigwigs?

Is that like being a BNF?

Several of those people don't even work for Marvel or even in licensed comics anymore. Like, what the hell is Larry Hama doing there? Is he doing anything other than OG GI Joe right now? Matt Fraction? He hasn't been with Marvel for three years, has little social media presence - I remember him deleting his Twitter and giving everyone the verbal finger after people started making creepy comments about his kids years back - and doesn't do much more than Sex Criminals right now. Kelly Sue left about the same time. Jamal Igle hasn't done steady mainstream work since 2011 (last I heard he took up a marketing position in a smaller press company)

When did David Brothers get in the public eye? Did someone hire him and I didn't hear about it? Good on him if that happened. I've read his stuff from 4thletter to Comics Alliance on. The guy got me to think and learn more than a few things about black perspective on comics and the treatment within them. Given what he wrote about then, I'm not at all shocked he ended up on a s***list or two.

Gail Simone doesn't surprise me either. She's pissed people off since as far back as pointing out the poor treatment of women in comics and coining "women in refrigerators". I miss her on DC books. Secret Six was great.

Rich Johnstons inclusion amuses me, since people actually involved in making comics don't like the guy either and Mark Waid's wished the guy could be blackballed entirely at least once.

Oh, I'm sure she was just overlooked.

Dunno about the other two, but I think at this point, people should already know full well what Mark Waid is like. Dude is outspoken and can get emotionally involved or angry over things. Especially if we're talking Superman. Been like that for as long as I've paid attention to creators and it sounds like it was like that even before message boards broke some barriers between creators and fans.

When all you have is a grindstone, everything looks like...an ax?

So, we have at least two people in the comic industry here then?
Zarius Two and yourself?

I've been doing my homework, watching Diversity in Comics to try and get perspective. I wouldn't say he knows much more than the average reader, but his ASMR seems to be winning him friends.

That Ernst guy is precious.

Damn, our very own Paul Allor made the list. Makes me want to check out more of his work outside the TMNT

I wish dumb, regressive assholes would just find their own media to consume