What people tried to explain to Brian from the start was that
- People on the farms have seen EVS do horrible shit time and time again.
- No revelation will change the minds of his core audience (cult).
- EVS will never be completely powerless until diabetes finally claims him or his audience.
- There is zero overlap between EVS's audience and your own. No Trashcast viewer is waiting for the next Six-Gun Gorilla.
Oh, no doubt. That's why I'm not sweating the Flying Monkeys who are "boycotting" my book. NU CG were never my readers in the first place.
If anything I'm kind of surprised Brian was still on OK-ish terms with EVS in 2022. The only way to co-exist with EVS is to be a slimey, subservient pedophilic worm like B.A. Turner, author of Vigilantes' Creed (
goodreads profile).
Fact of the matter is that I wrote him off after the sixth time he reneged on his promise to have me on to promote my book. (And like I said, for the TEN BILLIONTH time, Reethan don't owe me shit). But a well-meaning friend cajoled me into giving it a shot and I did, using the prospect of helping my fellow indie creators as a rationalization. Dumbfuckery on my part? No doubt! I never claimed to be the brightest bulb and I can be woefully naive.
On the bright side, there is definitely a more viable anti-EVS community nowadays that you can stick with to promote your books, especially when you are competent at your job like Brian is.
Like I said, I couldn't have picked a better time to be the object of
@FROG's ire if I had planned it. I am going to defend myself and my fellow creators who have been dicked over by Reethan and #KINGCANCELPIGMALIN, but I'm not with the program of being an anti-CG crusader. Where's the fun in that?
At the risk of sounding sappy and ghey, I got into making comics out of love for the art form. If someone were tell me that my comics suck, I would take that heart, but luckily no one ever has (emphasis on the word LUCK). I think the reason readers connect with my books is because they are nothing if not sincere, and I can say the same for most of my friends in the space. We're not making pitches for Netflix shows, we're making the kind of comics WE would love to read and we view our backers as the people who literally help us make our dreams come true and treat them accordingly with love and appreciation.
We came into the CG sphere because the mainstream a.) didn't want us, b.) stopped caring about comics, and c.) got polluted by ideologues, blacklists, whisper networks, censorship and all manner of dirty dealing. Now CG has ALL of those things; has, really, for years now.
I've been lucky. I've made about $50K total on IGG alone. This year I have two, maybe three books coming out, including a 150 page graphic novel that will be sold in brick and mortar book stores (!?). People are actually paying me to write and edit comics for them. WTF!? I have a massive case of Imposter's Syndrome as a result, but I think having some of that is actually healthy.
CG is the thing that I and my friends and collaborators in the scene will remember as the thing that brought us together so we could do awesome things together. But now it is something to be left in the past. Time to move onward and upward, and not by being "anti-CG", but by being obnoxiously, Tony Robbins-style positive and MAKING GREAT COMICS that people actually want to read.
All I ever wanted to do was comics. Now I'm making comics and couldn't be more grateful.
