Gabe reminds me of Mike Miller. Which makes me wonder how he fucks it up?
Same way he fucked up his DC career and his Comicsgate career - at the first sign of a moral conflict he'll just start burning down everything around him and will need to start fresh somewhere else. Getting half an asspat after an e-celeb convention aside, I'm not sure where else Al'Tayyib can go past his gig of coloring one comic book a year by Eric July. He snaked Mitch Breitweiser in the indie scenes and even in FNT and the Iron Age, he still has to contend with Smiller. The guy seems to have more lives than a cat though, so we'll see.
Not to belabor the Picard S3 shit, but watching Cecil squirm under EVS' trolling was a treat as Shillcil was reduced to arguing that it couldn't possibly be woke because
he didn't watch the first two seasons. Yes, that was his terminal argument last week on various streams including
his Tuesday show (WARNING: that link is either Cecil coping about nuTrek or Anna disgustingly yanking at a skin tag with tweezers, but they're both in that stream). Again, internet peer-pressure induced "narrative" brain rot.
I talked about this briefly in the MauLer thread, but after Nick Rekeita crashed and burned last year, Nerdrotic seems to be the frontrunner of the anti-SJW youtubers on the cusp of mainstream legitimacy. Although it involved many extra steps and a circumlocuitous path, he is finally on the threshold of being what he originally set out to be so many years ago - a pop culture media influencer.
The message is clear: if you give Gary exclusive preview access to your show that he can then use to make monetizeable content with, like CBS did with the third season of
Picard, he and his droogs will give fair, generous reviews to it. If not, well, better get ready to hear how you're part of the communist prevert conspiracy to taint our precious bodily fluids. They'll even spin narratives for you on how it's totally crushing the "woke" competing media that didn't play ball. And if you want to be in good standing with the FNT brand, Gary's personal 'JournoList' if you will, and possibly gain access to Buechler's favor (and platform), you better fall in line with what the brand says, like how Cecil, Yellowflash and Simple Zack are doing. I think there is a term for this sort of access-for-access racket, "
access jourmalism", or something like that. Very much a "the pigs learned to wear clothes and walk on two legs" moment to be sure. Look out
lamestream media, the fan revolution is here!
If any of this - all of this - has taught me any thing, it's that to get the real measure of a man, just give them what they want most and see what they do. These people will say and present themselves as anything they think their audience wants to hear, but wave a dollar bill under their nose and it's not long before their true selves begin to come out.
In other news:
Vito Gesuldi launched his own crowdfunded comic,
Superkiller #1 on IndieGoGo yesterday. The numbers are looking good, we might be heading to a third straight month.
Vic King put out his final livestream the other day, the latest to fall to the true enemy of the CG Slums - not the woke SJW mainstream, nor the ghost of Testefy-HD, or in the end not even themselves - but the
real foe that follows every slumtown resident like the unavoidable spectre of death itself - the need for gainful employment. Vic fought valiantly and courageously in his personal war against the hated enemy which will claim all people of slum in due time. Among other things, Vic funded an indie comic book about a highly sexed barbarian called
Beowar. He livestreamed an average of 12 hours a day of drawing while listening to Soundgarden and Pearl Jam (which had a comfy quality to them I liked). He built up a harem of elderly british women on the dole that somehow wandered in from TUG's #JusticeForJohnny scene that would cough up spare cigarette money for bookmark commissions from time to time. Vic even was the first CG person to debate Mark Brooks, as a bit of trivia there. Still, by the final stream Vic was offering to sing along to a song of the donator's choice for $2.50 if he could make the $200 he needs by the end of the show. But it was to no avail. Vic now joins the number of many lesser-known CG figures of the slums who have recently fallen to the Great Enemy such as Piper, Fowler, the entire cadet branch of latino CG creators going by
Comicsguey, Nasser and doubtless countless more that I'm not even aware of or have forgotten. Godspeed Vic, wherever you go.
It is dark. It is night. And in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
Frog, King Mob of Comicsgate that he be, is deeply attuned to when the dirt - and the people of the dirt - starts to shift underneath his feet. It's one of the qualities of his I've noticed. On last week's episode of Comicsgate Kings, Frog rose up to
the challenge placed here and assembled his fellow Kings to discuss the matter of Marvel spiting their own Spider-Man fanbase by having Mary Jane Watson get knocked up by a random soy boy in an "accelerated time pocket dimension", salting the earth for anyone wanting a return to the overwhelmingly favored idea of a Peter Parker/MJ marriage. Instead of teeing off on the easiest layup since ANAD Marvel though, the closest thing to a coherent thought expressed on the show was Graham Nolan musing that Spider-Man should have never been married in the first place, as this violates the old Stan Lee-derived dogma that "characters shouldn't change too much." The exact same unquestioned dogma of mandated stasis and arrested character development espoused by Marvel editorial that led to the Clone Saga, that led to One More Day, that ultimately led to Marvel's flagship title Spider-Man being rendered utterly radioactive and now they and Marvel Studios have to move on to new grounds like the "Spider-Verse" with Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man Noir, etc. because they've turned Peter Parker into a depressing middle-aged cuck and wagie loser that appeals to nobody. Also, adds Nolan, Spider-Man fell off when Ditko left and was taken over by John Romita Sr back in 1966 anyway. So to anyone that started reading Spider-Man is the past 55 years, you weren't reading the
real Spider-Man anyway, a message that I'm sure really resonated with people currently unhappy with a comic they want to enjoy. The rest of the CG royalty are silent, not knowing enough on the subject of the mainstream comic industry they're supposedly "resisting" to have an opinion one way or another.
Things reached a point where YellowFlash was demanding to go on the stream so he could provide context and information on what's going on in Marvel since none of the panelists have read a comic book they didn't make in decades, but he was rejected on account of not having the requisite credentials of mainstream professional experience to be allowed on the show. The point is, when YellowFlash is trying to step up to unfuck your shit and elevate the knowledge level of your show (on a subject where centuries of relevant collective experience are claimed), you are well and truly fucked.
Frog
had to be disturbed by the notion that Comicsgate's biggest names are no longer able to even find common ground with disaffected comic fans, who are supposed to be Comicsgate's niche in the larger anti-SJW youtube sphere. The people who the movement was founded by, around and rely upon for any hope of future growth. It definitely unnerved the hell out of me, and I've seen a lot of weird shit in this sector. Oh well. I'm sure Ryan Kinel and legions of aspiring zeroes will be sure to do the work needed to cater to unhappy comic book fans while Frog's elderly coterie ironically parrot, with unchallenged elitist authority, the same sort of ideas that destroyed the industry they worked in, had it replaced by manga and ultimately ended with them driven out of their own profession. All in all, I think my point was made regarding my original post.
27/4/2023 - COMICARTISTPRO SECRETS - HEADS UP COMICSGATE: THE JON MALIN PROBLEM
Since then, Frog has hopped to action with a frenetic surge in youtube activity, ranging from ragebaiting about troon beer, drama streams, efapping Stephen Crowder's spousal abuse CCTV video interspersed with adverts for Cyberfrog (lol), more troon beer outrage, appearing on Alex Stein's show (presumably gratitude on Stein's part for having his back against Brittany Venti) , and even a couple of non-livestreamed videos reading articles about woke mainstream comic news. There's a lot that could be covered, but of the rich batch of variegated Frog material put over the last week, I'd say "THE JON MALIN PROBLEM" was the most promising.
After a half hour warm up talking with Mike Baron about his planned lawsuit with the DailyKos over his cancelled Kickstarter campaign, Frog decides to broach the title subject of this day's stream - Jon Malin sperging on a Shane Davis Inglorious Rex closeout stream over CGers using Kickstarter like it was 2021. 'A betrayal of Comicsgate values', says Malin, and Frog would like to explore this idea I suspect out of boredom. The Kickstarter Treason (
written up here), in Frog's narration, really started in 2021 when Clint Stoker/Sweetcast, paraphrasing, stated he needed to use every tool available to him otherwise his fledgling comic business wasn't going to make it. This led to Frog seizing a relished opportunity to larp as Tony Soprano on a livestream saying 'Clint bettah not be outta pocket wit da boys if he knows what's good for him,
kapeesh?' This however did not have the desired effect and Clint more or less told the dorks to fuck off and separated himself from CG, with the silent approval of many mid-level Comicsgate creators in the same financial situation. Since that post however the matter seems to be largely settled, with creators on all economic stratum of Comicsgate starting campaigns wherever they can with little CG interference, and da Coach's anti-Kickstarter
diktat being largely disregarded on account of him having no ability to impact anyone's wallet good or bad and by and large the only thing Malin shows leadership on these days is making sure Chokeout and Matt Yackey get the streamyard link on his POST-KANGZ show placed squarely in Frog's wake, sort of like his campaigns.
Frog wants to revisit the subject though, helpfully walking Malin through his own stance on the issue and the issues up for debate here. Because he cares about Jon's emotional well being. Jon wasn't born yesterday though, he aint rising to the bait here by a bored Frog to fill out another empty show with tard rage. He's going to have to work for it. "Okay, you don't like Kickstarter" Frog continues to prod, "but what about Indiegogo and how they're shadowbanning people?" "Nope, don't like that." "What do you propose to actually do about that? And how do we make sure that smaller creators stay afloat while continuing to turn down Kickstarter" Frog asks 'leader' Jon. "Do what we've been doing. Going on youtube, promoting other creators" calmly answers da Coach, his ape rage still tempered. "So...
more livestreams" asks Frog, clearly not convinced that all of Comicsgate's problems can be solved with low energy hang-out livestreams.
Unexpectedly, our own
@Kelsey Shannon decides to weigh in on the matter of crowdfunding platforms in earnest. As far as the IndieGogo shadowban goes, Frog mostly got his personal ones lifted after complaining, which confuses him if the CG leader gets a pass but dozens of adjacent and peripheral figures are getting caught up in it. Kelsey apparently has watched some interviews with the new IGG owner who mentioned some efforts to correct late and non-fulfillment. But that doesn't explain the shadowbanning of timely fulfilllers like Jon Malin, Shane Davis and Graham Nolan. The dialogue, subtly steered by Kelsey, drifts over to options outside the Indiegogo/Kickstarter binary to fledgling CG crowdfund site fundmycomic.com by Luke Stone.
Fundmycomic roundly addresses all of the problems CG has had with other crowdfund platforms by building one completely under their control. The sort of thing people in CG have been saying for years needs to be done, has been done, to the fanfare of... nobody. Unsaid by all but thought of by all, deep down Comicsgaters know from experience that the last thing they can rely upon is another Comicsgater to handle their campaigns and get shit done. And so, the above screencap of Jon Dillard's
Buckler sequel, a FundMyComic exclusive, is sitting at $2000,
the highest grossing campaign on the site. Malin vows to show his support by tossing a side campaign on he won't worry too much if it goes tits up there as a test run, and if FundMyComics doesn't fuck it up he'll go from there.
Kelsey begins to open up on greater concerns he has with the state of da movement, like the 'top-heaviness' of it where creators are flocking to him for support instead of the audience where they ideally should be appealing to in a customer-driven movement. Frog talks about some non-CG Kings comics he thought looked good, but could only recall Eric Weathers and Keung Lee, both of whom haven't launched anything since 2020 and sided with Clint Stoker during the Kickstarter Treason. Whoops! Malin says he likes "Narwhal's dog book". Some love is given for Camel Moon's videos that he stopped making also back in 2020. Kelsey moves on to his next point of concern:
Frog is great because of his outreach efforts on shows like Tim Pool, but still Kelsey laments that the guys that run "comic channels" that get millions of views like Comicstorian, Comics Explained and countless others don't really give CG the time of day. Why aren't the people who make youtube about comics leading viewers to Comicsgaters, freeing up CG to
make videos about comics make comics make entertaining youtube content simp? Why isn't Comicstorian lending his comic cred to the saviors of the industry like Mommy E-Thot or Brittany Venti, asks Kelsey. It's like the guidance that Comicstorian imparted on Frog when mentoring him to be a youtuber: "don't ever talk about comics and instead outrage bait about whatever's trending on Twitter that day or vlog about your diet routine or beauty regiment". Sage advice that Frog has followed unerringly in his meteoric rise from 140k subscribers in 2017 to his 146k subscribers today. Frog, I presume bored of listening to this, abruptly starts putting out a steelmanned version of Malin's argument against "disloyal scabs" like Clint Stoker (but not like Billy Tucci or Mike Baron). You can tell he's already larping as Tony Soprano again in his mind:
"You go against da union and be a scab chasing money on the table Clint Stokah you gabagoo you gonna get whacked, kapeesh?" Comicsgate is a very serious movement.
Kelsey defers from the Stoker tangent to reiterate his unease with Comicsgate's total reliance on a crowdfund platform that actively shadowbans them. Frog offers his own concerns, which is smaller Comicsgaters' total reliance on the Comicsgate scene/community/whatever to propel their business for them in lieu of developing a real business plan beyond following in the wake of bigger creators, which IndieGoGo makes it easy to do without additional effort on his part. Malin shifts nervously in silence. Until they do, Frog continues, it's an unfortunate necessity that big name Comicsgaters launch on Indiegogo so that the smaller CGers get some exposure. Or at least would if they weren't shadowbanned. Kelsey repeats, again, that CG needs an alternative to an IndieGoGo.
The merit of boycotting is discussed next, which Jon Malin says he doesn't really believe in the Bud Light boycott over Dylan Mulvaney; at the end of the day it's what his friends and family are bringing over, he's going to go with it. Even the chat is starting to pick up on the dissonance of demanding people forego thousands of dollars
out of loyalty to Simple Zack, who literally bailed the second he was asked to help anyone but himself, but turning away from a $15 case of Bud Lite is too much of an ask from Jon Malin. Kelsey presses Malin on this, da Coach saying "Oh yeah? If you guys won't boycott Kickstarter? Fine. But I won't boycott Bud Lite. I drink Budweiser!" Frog starts to look nervous. The chat starts to pelt Coach with tomatoes, peppered with calls of "Tranny lover" and "Cuck Jon". Frog is the next to question the man of oar, arguing that on one hand, the Bud Lite boycott is having an appreciable effect, while at Kickstarter has shown they aren't going to concede to Malin's demands of total capitulation no matter what, so what's the problem if CGers use it if it's a matter of making ends meet or not? Malin, who usually resists new ideas like how a normal person would resist forced organ transplantion without anaesthesia, tentatively agrees to boycott tranny beer for six months.
1/5/2023 - COMICSKELSEY - THE TRAVELER
Shortly after the great debate on the state of Comicsgate, Kelsey Shannon starts a livestream on his own channel, the subject a somber reflection on the last five years of his participation in 'the movement'. Having posted a collage of the many books he's created, drawn and colored titled '
2018-Present', there's a bittersweet element to his recollections. Kelsey early on hitched his wagon to Mitch "Bitch Notwiser" Breitweiser and Allegiance Arts. Mitch's latest project,
The Saints II, isn't going to clear $10K; the writing is on the wall for Allegiance Arts, hence Kelsey's return to the public and building towards his own crowdfund. The dream of CG creators getting distributed was real, Kelsey feels, but the endeavor was 'cursed' when Mitch decided to fuck over the original backers of his business "for the greater good" of securing distribution with Wal-Mart. Then Mitch's business partner kept it "for the greater gooderer" and decided to fuck over Mitch and the later investors too, leading to Wal-Mart pulling the plug and leaving Mitch dead in the water. Sad. The end result is that Kelsey's hard work on Nora's Saga was never regarded as a great CG work that he feels by right it should been, something that Comicsgaters could be proud of. Next was Shannon's works on graphic novels like
The Ballad of No and
Mind Your Business, comics that Kelsey spent long months painstakingly realizing with the full weight of his craft behind him, and Simple Zack for his spent the better part of an afternoon writing and coordinating. But at the end of the day Zack also flaked on the movement, and ultimately the work was under his name. Under Mitch's name. People question whether those two ever believed in anything but, Kelsey says, he for one believed in the original goal and ideas, and staked his whole professional self behind it. But the second someone waved a dollar under Mitch's nose, under Meyer's nose, they changed. They showed their true selves.
At this point, Kelsey says he's accepted that he can't just lend his support behind someone who says something he believes in at this point. If he wants to see the change he wants, he's going to have to step up and make it happen. So he's going to be launching his upcoming self-owned project on FundMyComic, the CG-owned crowdfund site. Will it make as much money as it would on Kickstarter or Indiegogo? Perhaps not. But this is something that has to be done, and if no big name or big projects are driving traffic to the site, it's not going to happen.
