That's the position any rational person should take from just watching Preston's stream. Forget about Rekieta for a moment. Nobody has to like him.
I don't care for EvS. I don't care for comics. EvS might be the most exceptional person in the universe for all I know. Have not defended him once.
I just think it's hilarious how people hate him to the point people can't even laugh at Preston's exceptionalism on display. It's very sad.
A few people have sheepishly said that Preston's criminal case "likely won't go very far." That's an understatement. It ain't gonna go anywhere but the trash can. Preston is a shit eating cuck who consensually filmed shit eating cuck porn, and is ass mad everybody now knows. He's trying to spin himself as a victim of a crime, when he's only a victim of his own stupidity.
Comicsgate is even more autistic than Gamergate was. No wonder this thread is total dogshit that is infested with unfunny. Of course it took Preston getting pegged for Null to take notice and put that as a news item. That's the funniest shit that happened in all this to date. The rest is just autistic screeching.
PP doing bdsm porn was funny. Very funny. For, like, a day or two.
Shaming a former sex worker on social media for days is just sad. This is the difference.
Zack's taste has gotten more idiosyncratic as time has gone on. In the last half-year or so, he's recommended some real low-quality shit. I can honestly say I've never bought a comic because of his opinion, but I have found quite a few lolcows thanks to him; who doesn't love laughing at Marvel's "woke" hires?
I have discovered some amazing comics thanks to him.
Like the so-bad-it-is-a-cultural-milestone America.
Oh, and Spider-Man Life Story and Batman White Knight and more good comics.
His reviews are vloggy. It is much about how he feels about stuff. I like it when he is angry, but I really love it when he is excited. I loved his most recent video on the Shadow and I want to read it, because hearing him getting excited makes me pumped.
But then again, I am a comicbook fan, not a culture warrior.
That means that sometimes he will get excited for reading a basic comicbook because he reads a comicbook a day and sometimes you need something basic.
Or he will go back to the 90's comics he so loved and discover some of them were utter garbage, like everybody says all the time.
Or he will say: I do not like person X, but he did a good job here - or does good comics overall.
The reason YBZ make a splash was not because he was a cow. It was because he was less of a cow than most people on CG - he has some social skills, some common sense, wants to imporve and is willing to admit he was wrong.
Compared to the Captain Cummingses, TUGs, EVSs and YFs, he is normal. If you were back in 2017 and went through two or three Micah Curtis videos you wound get why Zack exploded.
I guess I could try and play devil's advocate and come up with something?
I wouldn't call Meyer a failure but at the moment he appears to be on a downward slide, his campaigns are making less money and generating less backers each time. The Expendables was a massive IP that underperformed in everyone's eyes and had some big collaborative names attached to it eg: Sly Stallone, Chuck Dixon, Graham Nolan, Dave Dorman, Butch Guice.
Richard also seems to have gotten lazy with his campaigns, he promotes them less and engages less with his audience via social media and livestreams. His more recent campaigns have gotten real sloppy, he no longer includes page counts in the description (eg: Pandemic, Expendables, Grand Bizarre) he also isn't being as generous with stretch goals (Grand Bizarre had one, Expendables didn't have any until the last days of the campaign). His first Jawbreakers campaign by comparison was extremely well executed compared to his latest campaigns, somehow he has gotten worse at crowdfunding instead of better with experience.
He also contradicts himself in terms of customer service. He claims his selling hotdogs, yet his customers ask for digital and he refuses. His international customers ask for Pandemic to be an add-on with Jawbreakers since international shipping costs more than the comic, he refuses. Books arrived damaged internationally and they ask for Gemini mailers instead of bubble mailers, he agree's but charges an EXTRA $10 for a .50c mailer.
His lack of conviction for standing up for Sashi during Gobblegate was spineless but I can still admire him for continuing to hire her, so I won't punish him too much for that. His lawsuit with Waid seems like it's going nowhere and currently Waid and Antarctic are both disputing his claims of TI, so it's not going to end well IMO, but I can understand why he felt the need to follow through with it. Allowing Ethan to subvert what was essentially a movement based on his guiding principles was weak but again I can't blame him for rejecting the CG label or a leadership role within it.
I still like Zack and wish him the best, his certainly not a failure but it does feel like his slipping away. I won't dedicate my time to a-logging him in this thread or others though, his still our boi.
I believe YBZ is starting to hit the limitations of the CF model.
He is doing way too many books to be able to run every campaign as a special event, he cannot justify the price for his books and he cannot expand his audience.
Now, if he was willing to go on camera, do well researched videos about the comicbooks (like Comictropes) and hire an editor, or get a wingman and talk comics (imagine YBZ and JSG do Kayfabe-like streams), his channel might grow beyond 105K subs - the implosion of the comicbook market and New Warriors helped him get out of his rut, but he is just going through the motions for years now.
In my mind, his best choice would be to get a publisher to distribute his back catalogue through Diamond/Amazon/whatever and get a steady stream of cash. But this would undermine his case against Mark Waid and the case is a shield for the entirety of comicsgate: SJWs are worried going for CG business because of this. I wouldn't be surprised if RCM churching it up is because of said case. And his IGG is also "funding an original lawsuit" (this line is always making me laugh), if he dropped it, he could easily sustain his publishing business.
He should focus on a JB album every 3-4 months, an IS a year and maybe one or two of his weirder stuff here and there and make sure to overprint, store and offer back issues as add-ons to all of his campaigns. He could get a healthy cashflow.
Missed the quotes about the Anna cover, but I believe that the way it made the spergery explode is that it showed everybody that the CG model is for the big dogs.
The only way to succeed is to attract a large or (in the case of Sweetcast) a dedicated audience.
Anna and her 120K followers could make bank with a bad cover for a Vampirella comic.
Boring AF yesmen who can barely get 1000 subs and go on in boring streams navelgazing have no chance. This is the peasant revolution, they were fed a pipe dream by EVS (to his defence, him, Jon Malin and YBZ were always telling "grow your channel") and are quick to lash out against the nobility, as the money in CG start to dry out.
