Diseased #Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

[Newman's Own]

Except it is when the level of work you produce with the detail is the exact reason you were hired. Said detail takes time to produce. Bolland never figured out how to hit the monthly deadlines. It took Ethan twenty years to nail it.

Nope.

Any artist with more than 2 years working on monthlies knows exactly how many pages they can do in a month. Editors take this info into account when they hire these writers. If Frank Quitely can be depended on to do, say, 5 issues in a year then his number is around 110 pages or more.

If an artist decides they are going to spend more time on each page with additional line work/detail they as professionals are aware of the extra time needed.

When a pro like Ethan says he can have, say, 60 pages done in five months and structures his campaign around that prediction it's because he knows he can get the work done because he's done it before. If it takes longer it's because he isn't putting the time in at the table the way he did before.

Making it 'extra detailed' does not add a year to production. Spending time on Twitter or YouTube instead of with the brushes does.

Guys like Bagley can easily bang out 12 books a year because they are fast but if they did a crowd funder and suddenly couldn't manage to put out 244 pages/year it's not because they slowed down. It's because they didn't put in the time.

Silvestri didn't slow down when he brought Cyber Force to Image. He got a huge payday and quit spending the same time at the table that he used to. Cyber Force was some pretty sweet work but at most the extra care and attention added 25% to the time per page I'd wager.

If I was a craftsman building end tables by hand and you contracted me to build one with some extra detail. I'd quote you a time and get the work done in that time because a professional knows what he's doing and bids work accordingly. If I take 4 times as long as I said it's because I wasn't working on your table not because you asked for an inlay I know will take an extra 8 hrs.

 

[Buck Mullet]

I didn't read Cerebus.

At least go read Jaka's Story. Maybe you'll learn how to create a more compelling plot then aliens invade and write interesting characters.

 

[Seymour Glass]

How do you know you're into it or not until you read it? There are good books and bad books, there are good comic books and bad comic books. Illustrations don't usually make something poison if it wasn't already. Everything from board books, to YA fiction, to fully adult fiction labelled as non-fiction will require critical thinking on some level. You might as well start with maintaining a set of principles and sticking with them and sorting out the material as you go. Assuming an entire art medium is intrisically evil because of pictures, you can take your half-baked iconoclast ways elsewhere.

I have to commend your committing to the full retard bit when you sperg about the treatment of Dave Sim only to turn around and call what Dave Sim does as poison anyway.

You're clearly having a hard time with what I wrote. Probably because you read too many funnybooks.

I'll try and be clear for you. The time most people have to dedicate to reading is already limited. If you just read one type of publication that is by design half pictures and half words then you'll get less out of it than you would reading, for example, a fiction book. Your mind has less to do because it's depicted for you. You will become mentally lazier.

Comics are subversive by nature. Look at how comics even began. War propaganda to bouy up one side. Now, this is okay if you're aware of the political leanings of whatever you're reading. You will be less aware of them if you read nothing but comicbooks. Rereading The Maxx after reading a little Camille Paglia absolutely changed the characters in that story. Sam Kieth is a bit of a male feminist and it comes out in his characters. It adds an extra layer to the book if you're aware of the source material.

Dave Sim's Cerebus certainly changed after he read the bible and Koran and whatever else (I haven't gotten into Islamic texts yet but I will).

My point is that you need to read other things to enrich your life and by extension your hobby of reading comicbooks. It'll make you a better writer if nothing else.

Edit: to answer your question about maintaining a set of principles and sticking to them. I'd have to ask you where you think those principles came from?

 

[Newman's Own]

It was Edwin who blew up/exaggerated the whole Dave Sim story and IIRC completely stitched him-up, with nothing but old blog posts and an interview (I damn sure there were no MeToo allegations), which, when the truth finally came out, turned out to be nothing more than he had had sex with a lass when she was 21 who he first met at convention when she was 14, and he said child-like features on women made them more beautiful to draw.

@edwin_boyette

Care to set the record straight?

This is an interesting story but I wouldn't trust any story coming out of WarCampaigners mouths without some verification.

EDIT:

Comics are subversive by nature.

Comics are a medium by nature. Like books, movies or magazines comics is it's own form of communication no more or less "subversive by nature" than live theater.

What makes any creative work subversive is the author of the work and not the medium that they employ.

Saying that "comics are subversive" is like saying "guns kill people". A gun is a tool. People kill people, not guns. Comics are only subversive when the author uses them as a tool of subversion. They may be an excellent tool for that but it isn't 'their nature'.

 

[Seymour Glass]

@edwin_boyette

Care to set the record straight?

This is an interesting story but I wouldn't trust any story coming out of WarCampaigners mouths without some verification.

EDIT:

Comics are a medium by nature. Like books, movies or magazines comics is it's own form of communication no more or less "subversive by nature" than live theater.

What makes any creative work subversive is the author of the work and not the medium that they employ.

Saying that "comics are subversive" is like saying "guns kill people". A gun is a tool. People kill people, not guns. Comics are only subversive when the author uses them as a tool of subversion. They may be an excellent tool for that but it isn't 'their nature'.

The Yellow Kid, America's first comic. Definitely didn't have any subversive messages about whites being better than blacks. Nope.

You lack history. I know I'm arguing with a bunch of meth addicts to stop taking the drug but you're being willfully ignorant. Literally every media was created to sway you one way or the other.

The problem with comics was their ubiquitous grasp on the minds of youth culture. Most service men in the 30s read comics and the government took notice. Yes, all media is subversive in the way that all guns are made to shoot things. It's their nature

 

[Absurdity]

You're clearly having a hard time with what I wrote. Probably because you read too many funnybooks.

I'll try and be clear for you. The time most people have to dedicate to reading is already limited. If you just read one type of publication that is by design half pictures and half words then you'll get less out of it than you would reading, for example, a fiction book. Your mind has less to do because it's depicted for you. You will become mentally lazier.

Comics are subversive by nature. Look at how comics even began. War propaganda to bouy up one side. Now, this is okay if you're aware of the political leanings of whatever you're reading. You will be less aware of them if you read nothing but comicbooks. Rereading The Maxx after reading a little Camille Paglia absolutely changed the characters in that story. Sam Kieth is a bit of a male feminist and it comes out in his characters. It adds an extra layer to the book if you're aware of the source material.

Dave Sim's Cerebus certainly changed after he read the bible and Koran and whatever else (I haven't gotten into Islamic texts yet but I will).

My point is that you need to read other things to enrich your life and by extension your hobby of reading comicbooks. It'll make you a better writer if nothing else.

I'm not sure you know how to express yourself adequately, but you definitely have not mastered the art of critical thinking, so reading will only compound your issues.

People are reading now more than they ever did, but the problem isn't that reading something with pictures makes people stupid, it's that all media, funny books or not, is employing the worst psychological methods to brand our brains into submission. Thank you, Ed Bernays and Sigmund Freud and all the other pseudopsychologists of the world. You always have to parcel out what is being said. Perhaps like other modes of entertainment, comics ought to have a more comprehensive rating system for the very young, but if kids have decent parents who care as much about what they look at as they do the food they buy, it shouldn't be a problem.

Second, I don't think you realize who much you limit yourself when you say comics are subversive, then you use Dave Sim's personal story of enlightenment as somehow supporting your argument. According to the logic of your statement, it doesn't matter who makes them, all comics are subversive all the time.

Third, you don't know your history. Comics had their origin in cheaply made entertainment in 19th century Britain, namely "penny dreadfuls" and magazines like Punch. In the States we had the the development of the comic strip, which in turn eventually led to the comic book. Illustration has always held the power of transmitting ideas much quicker than words can, and it will always be that way for better or worse. Ever see those political cartoons of the early 1800s?

Let's use an example used by even more propagandists than comic books: posters. Would anything you just said about comic books be justly applied to posters as well? Are pictures evil in and of themselves because they are more accessible or can they be used for good or evil? Nobody here is saying they only read comic books either so you're just creating a strawman to distract from your bumbling brainless scarecrow entrance.

 

[SaidNoOneEver]

The Yellow Kid, America's first comic.

No it wasn't. You have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[Seymour Glass]

I'm not sure you know how to express yourself adequately, but you definitely have not mastered the art of critical thinking, so reading will only compound your issues.

People are reading now more than they ever did, but the problem isn't that reading something with pictures makes people stupid, it's that all media, funny books or not, is employing the worst psychological methods to brand our brains into submission. Thank you, Ed Bernays and Sigmund Freud and all the other pseudopsychologists of the world. You always have to parcel out what is being said. Perhaps like other modes of entertainment, comics ought to have a more comprehensive rating system for the very young, but if kids have decent parents who care as much about what they look at as they do the food they buy, it shouldn't be a problem.

Second, I don't think you realize who much you limit yourself when you say comics are subversive, then you use Dave Sim's personal story of enlightenment as somehow supporting your argument. According to the logic of your statement, it doesn't matter who makes them, all comics are subversive all the time.

Third, you don't know your history. Comics had their origin in cheaply made entertainment in 19th century Britain, namely "penny dreadfuls" and magazines like Punch. In the States we had the the development of the comic strip, which in turn eventually led to the comic book. Illustration has always held the power of transmitting ideas much quicker than words can, and it will always be that way for better or worse. Ever see those political cartoons of the early 1800s?

Let's use an example used by even more propagandists than comic books: posters. Would anything you just said about comic books be justly applied to posters as well? Are pictures evil in and of themselves because they are more accessible or can they be used for good or evil? Nobody here is saying they only read comic books either so you're just creating a strawman to distract from your bumbling brainless scarecrow entrance.

1) people are not reading now more than ever. If you mean higher literacy rates that doesn't mean anyone is actually reading anything.

2) i never said Dave sim was enlightened. I wrote "his work changed after he read the bible and koran"

3) i never said the world's first comic, but America's. It's almost like you half read everything I wrote. I wonder why.

To reiterate, I am the one who wrote that comics shouldn't be all you read. I'm sure that's hard for you to remember with all that wiki regurgitation you're doing.

Yes, all media is subversive. Posters, television, whatever else is meant to sway you. It isn't that hard to see.

Stop being a disingenuous faggot.

 

[Pilule Noire]

I've had times where I really could have done without hearing one more thing about Stan Lee's earlier career as a two-bit writer taking complete advantage of Jack Kirby's mega talent. But the fact is my enjoyment of these characters is quite independent of my appreciation for the character of Stan Lee, at least at that stage in his life.

Since we're all having a good healthy slapfight over the comics 'art', or lack thereof, I have a small heresy that I want to vent here.

I know there's this comics orthodoxy of Stan Lee being the bad guy hack. And Kirby/Ditko being the good guy artists. For example, Alan Moore never missed an opportunity to take a jab at Stan, when Stan was alive, and I think that had a big influence on the general consensus, especially at the more high-falutin' end of comicbook dorkdom.

But I've got to say, I'm not on board with it. I think Kirby and Ditko are overrated! And Stan is underrated.

Now before comics dorks start flinging shit at me, let me explain why I have come to this line of heretical comics dork wrongthinking.

In bullet points:

- Kirby's solo stuff isn't that good! Comics dorks are often afraid to admit this directly, but they do sometimes admit it. Why just the other day, Art Thibert and Dan Fraga were discussing Kirby on Dan's channel, they're huge fans of his but even they concede that his solo stuff is too nuts/all over the place to be very enjoyable.

- However you CAN point to Stan collaborating with another artist, the BD artist Moebius, and what was the result? A goddamn amazing masterpiece of a comic, Silver Surfer Parable, better than any Marvel comic Stan ever did AND better than Moebius's self-written stuff.

So I think Stan gets a bad rap because comics dorks fetishize and masturbate over the art, but their monkey brains cannot perceive genius in the intangibles of language, communication and thought, such as was possessed by Stan. I think Stan's verbal and social abilities were really underrated, almost taken for granted. To me he was more of a once-in-a-generation talent than Kirby or Ditko. He's up there with Orson Welles, George Lucas - a huge figure in American art.

The snootier end of comicbook dorkdom is usually up Alan Moore's arse and down Stan's throat. But what has Alan Moore done really, apart from pervert and creep things up? Anyone can do that, the more amazing achievement to me was how Stan built these silly things up in the first place.

Nobody in comics, to this day, has been as imaginatively virile and commercially fertile as Stan! And probably no one ever will be.

Lee and Kirby were important supporting geniuses to Stan's genius, but the idea that they were the real geniuses, and Stan was nothing more than a parasitical monkey on their backs, seems like BS to me. Stan carried on just fine with Romita, Buscema, later Moebius, and just kept making great stuff, for decades.

Look at this video, you can see that even as a decaying old man on the brink of death who can barely hear or see anything, he still manages to be sharper and cooler than the entire Image crew. He makes them all look like awkward dorky squares:

Watching this video, in my mind there's no doubt who was the real heart and soul of comics. Stan the Man!

The only comics guy who has really come close to Stan for stardom/success is Todd McFarlane, but he really can't write at all. Look at this brutal savaging of the latest issue of Spawn, from a recent mini-review by that guy RJ from The Fourth Age:

"Spawn #315
Well this was a waste of my time and money. McFarlane doesn’t even do the art anymore and STILL hasn't learned how to write a decent story. You’d think that after 25 years he might look into that. Just goes to show that there’s more than one way to kill comics."

Now compare that to me with Stan Lee, I can read a Spider-Man comic from the early sixties with him and Ditko, or from the late nineties with him and Romita, and they're both great fun, enjoyable, entertaining comics. They leave me as pleased as Spawn left RJ disgusted. And these Spideys feel completely coherent, despite being made decades apart, with different artists drawing it.

The thing about Stan is that he IS cornball, hokey, cliche, all the bad things according to snootier writers. But they miss the genius of how he made incredibly entertaining, pleasing, widely-appealing comics out of it, blending it all into a vast yet coherent imaginative universe.

I would compare it to how genius comedians can come on stage and barely say anything, or say something innocuous, but due to their skills of timing, expression and so on, they can get the whole crowd rolling with laughter, without them really understanding why they're laughing.

Stan is like that with comics! You can read them and say they're hokey, cliche and so on. But you WILL enjoy them, and you won't really be able to explain why.

 

[TheCosmicWarrior]

He wanted:
1. For me to promote digital Cerebus Omnibuses on my YouTube channel.
2. To not create anything new
3. To plot or help me plot CYBERFROG for a 5 figure fee
4. To avoid the internet
5. To do all of this through a complicated and inconvenient network of technology from the 1980's, including fax machines and landlines and messages from his fans.

Given what i know of Sim, this seems plausible and probably what happened. Also sounds like far too much of a pain in the ass to want to deal with. I get it.

That said, Sim sounds like he's hella based now, maybe even more than Ditko. I should probably read Cerebus and see what's up.

 

[jspit2.0]

ANOTHER EDIT: This all based on a conversation with a WC higher-up I had about a year ago. They told me that EB had a lot of pull with WC back them, before the whole 'scheme and scams' thing, and he was the driving force behind WC going after DS with a vengence.

At least you admit this theory is WC. No. I wouldn't believe anything WC said about anyone. Boyette is pretty transparent in what he is and about. He's an old Republican/Christian who is pissed because of actual discrimination against a bunch of groups he is a member of.

As an active/passive watcher of the clusterfuck that is CG, it has been in ongoing tension between a slim majority, who are practicing Christians and a sizable, vocal minority I would label irreligious. For whatever reason the internet magnifies these people and they find their way into every internet Gate or movement. They frequently clash with the Jesus freaks, simp for the rainbow, and generally attempt to divide and conqueror.

This whole thing is about money, not advocacy or consumers or actually persecuted groups who didn't do nuffin'. Those people all got driven the fuck off.

Comics are a mental poison. They'll drain you of critical thinking and supplant ideologies in you unknowingly. They're great tools for propaganda and are often used by invading countries to demoralize the native population. I'm not saying never read them but be sure to read a regular book as much as you can.

@5t3n0g0ph3r you got it, boss.

Literacy is great. Now talk about actual Comicsgate or go to the sperg about comics thread.

Since we're all having a good healthy slapfight over the comics 'art', or lack thereof, I have a small heresy that I want to vent here.

I know there's this comics orthodoxy of Stan Lee being the bad guy hack. And Kirby/Ditko being the good guy artists. For example, Alan Moore never missed an opportunity to take a jab at Stan, when Stan was alive, and I think that had a big influence on the general consensus, especially at the more high-falutin' end of comicbook dorkdom.

Oh he still does. Alan's a piece of work. Hey, you forgot to add the best part!

So, Alan Moore hates Stan, right? Wrong! He wrote multiple pieces on how amazing Stan Lee was when he was in his twenties before he became "Alan Moore". Then he fell in line and cried about how Kirby was mistreated. He never cried to hard for Ditko because of his politics.

Funnier still, he still ripped off homaged Stan Lee stories up to and including LOEG which is just the Avengers with Victorian characters.

No one is more fake than Alan Moore.

Given what i know of Sim, this seems plausible and probably what happened. Also sounds like far too much of a pain in the ass to want to deal with. I get it.

That said, Sim sounds like he's hella based now, maybe even more than Ditko. I should probably read Cerebus and see what's up.

Showing you power levels Jon. How have you not read Cerebus?

 

[SargonF00t]

Okay so this list you provided had nothing to do with it. It's just a moral issue.

View attachment 1955523
And you probably just didn't see any of this in your YouTube chat. It took someone making a blog post about it. Cool and believable.

Edit: my point is that you're lying. You lied about considering sim "god-tier" you lied about the reason you stopped the collab is for "morals". You only care about money and if renfamous hadn't whipped up a mob you'd of probably made the comic with sim because you're a whore.

If the pendulum was swinging the other way and being a stark liberal was counter-culture that's what you'd be. Wherever the money goes, you go.

You sound unhinged.

Being a liberal would have been in Ethan's interest when he was at DC, yet he didn't do that.

 

[Newman's Own]

You lack history. I know I'm arguing with a bunch of meth addicts to stop taking the drug but you're being willfully ignorant.

Stop being a disingenuous faggot.

Resorting to ad hominem illustrates the weakness of your argument and your lack of confidence.

I get that you're here to troll but you have nothing new to show here.

Go give the weebs a try. They're more likely to bite down on your bait, dipshit.

Stan gets a bad rap because comics dorks fetishize and masturbate over the art, but their monkey brains cannot perceive genius in the intangibles of language, communication and thought, such as was possessed by Stan.

Stan "wrote" over ten books a month in the 60's. The quality of his "writing" varied massively from artist to artist. The reason for this is because the artists were doing the vast majority of the plotting, and writing. Stan generally had a meeting with the artist where he might suggest a character or story idea and then he'd hear back from the artist when the pencils were done and he'd write the script over the finished story.

The reason people say Kirby and Ditko were the true geniuses is because they did ALL the heavy lifting with regard to creating stories and characters while Stan Lee, as the "writer", happily took all the credit for their genius. Ditko took the time to script all the dialogue on the stories he wrote and Stan would come in after and rewrite it.

The notion that Stan was the driving force behind the best work of Ditko or Kirby is laughable under analysis.

Read some of Stan's work with lesser artists if you don't believe it. Why is Stan so much better at plot and character when the legends are drawing?

Stan Lee himself has admitted and denied this at various times throughout history.

But what has Alan Moore done really, apart from pervert and creep things up?

Alan Moore is a creep but he's a massive genius creep.

Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke and From Hell, Miracleman, Top 10, Promeathea, Tom Strong, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Moore is a fucking weirdo but his genius is undeniable to anyone who seriously reads comics.

Lee and Kirby were important supporting geniuses to Stan's genius, but the idea that they were the real geniuses, and Stan was nothing more than a parasitical monkey on their backs, seems like BS to me.

Lee wasn't a "parasitical monkey". He was an editor who wrote dialogue and excelled at salesmanship and taking credit while not giving it.

Kirby's stuff post Marvel was still great. Unless you think Apocalypse/New Gods was bad. It seems to have stood the test of time.

Stan was lucky to be editing these guys when they were at their creative zeniths but he was not doing the heavy lifting no matter how much credit he took.

 

[Absurdity]

Congratulations on your first exchange on the CG thread headed for Spergatory! Feed us, Seymour, feed us now!

View attachment 1955899
The Yellow Kid, America's first comic. Definitely didn't have any subversive messages about whites being better than blacks. Nope.

You lack history. I know I'm arguing with a bunch of meth addicts to stop taking the drug but you're being willfully ignorant. Literally every media was created to sway you one way or the other.

The problem with comics was their ubiquitous grasp on the minds of youth culture. Most service men in the 30s read comics and the government took notice. Yes, all media is subversive in the way that all guns are made to shoot things. It's their nature

Actually, the Yellow Kid is more representative of Yellow Journalism, which is mostly employed by reporters and journalists, not illustrators, comic book writers or artists. Not that reporters are all intrinsically subversive, many are. You can't hold the medium responsible ahead of the artist. You keep pushing this hackneyed pragmatism like it's a statement of truth. Most artists and writers might be a couple bricks shy of a load but it doesn't prove that the medium they used made it that way.

Even if you sperged for a million pages, you'll never be able to provide proof that all illustrators have evil agendas or that all illustrations do harm to the mind and soul of the viewer. Ideas don't hold minds, it's the other way around. All these pictures do is to transmit an idea that the artist is trying to communicate. If it was only words, it would still be propaganda but because it portrays the idea with more immediacy doesn't somehow make it more or less racist. If we started ranking good works and bad works only according to their effectiveness or their popularity or any other measure besides the actual message itself, you have learned far more from the poisoned rhetoric of the SJW than you realize.

1) people are not reading now more than ever. If you mean higher literacy rates that doesn't mean anyone is actually reading anything.

2) i never said Dave sim was enlightened. I wrote "his work changed after he read the bible and koran"

3) i never said the world's first comic, but America's. It's almost like you half read everything I wrote. I wonder why.

Despite what you may say about reading comprehension levels, if you're reading 50 Shades of Gray it might be better that you do have a stunted imagination going into it. You're really basing this off of the power of illustration alone, and not the spirit that animates it. As if we're all immediately incepted and mind controlled the moment we look at it. That's science fiction.

You use Dave Sim's reading of the Koran like it means anything when you haven't even read it, know what it means to his work (good or bad), or would even matter because he didn't stop making comics after he read those books.

Yes, all media is subversive. Posters, television, whatever else is meant to sway you. It isn't that hard to see.

Stop being a disingenuous faggot.

By that super intelligent statement, your posts are also subversive. Therefore, kindly stick to your principles and refrain from contributing to the media. Thanks, see you in Spergatory!

 

[SaidNoOneEver]

Actually, the Yellow Kid ismore representative of Yellow Journalism, which is mostly employed by reporters and journalists, not illustrators, comic book writers or artists. Not that reporters are all intrinsically subversive, many are. You can't hold the medium responsible ahead of the artist. You keep pushing this hackneyed pragmatism like it's a statement of truth. Most artists and writers might be a couple bricks shy of a load but it doesn't prove that the medium they used made it that way.

I just did some reading on the history of comics and was interested to learn that the term "yellow journalism" was derived from that Yellow Kid strip.

 

[Mister Dongs]

So according to this video here, @edwin_boyette contacted Dave Sim on Jan 3rd. 2019 and then ran with the results to anyone who would listen like Paul Revere, including Frog, WC and TUG, the latter deciding to make a video denouncing it with. This was in response to renfamous accusing Frog of hypocrisy for criticizing SJW pedophile comic artist Eric Esquivel while working with David Sim two days prior (Jan 1st). @Seymour Glass , if you could tell us the date that chat you took the screencaps from that would be helpful. Before this, the only message including both Sim and @FROG was a communique Dave Sim had a fan fax to Bleeding Cool addressed to him regarding Frog's claims that Darwyn Cooke was Comicsgate.

 

[NasserRabadi13]

I think Kirby and Ditko are overrated! And Stan is underrated.

I think what starts the "STAN LEE EVIL" thing (and I even fell for that for a little back when I was getting into comics) is the fact that Ditko and Kirby did get screwed over, as did most of the great artists who gave Marvel and DC their creations just to be kicked aside. It didnt happen to them as bad as Jerry Seigle and Joe Shuster, but it did happen, and I think a lot of people are mad at things none of us were around for.

It's easier to believe Stan's a bad guy when he's the face of Marvel (and comics in general) and Kirby and Ditko didn't always get what they deserved, than it is to take a step back and say "well I wasnt there" and realize how it all became a he said/she said.

A lot of people dont realize that if Stan wasn't the promoter he was, then we wouldnt even have the comics that they're all complaining Kirby and Ditko were screwed over on. Things would be a lot different without Stan.

That being said, I dont agree with you on Stan being underrated, but he does get dumb hate from Alan Moore neckbeard types.

 

[Absurdity]

So according to this video here, @edwin_boyette contacted Dave Sim on Jan 3rd. 2019 and then ran with the results to anyone who would listen like Paul Revere, including Frog, WC and TUG, the latter deciding to make a video denouncing it with. This was in response to renfamous accusing Frog of hypocrisy for criticizing SJW pedophile comic artist Eric Esquivel while working with David Sim two days prior (Jan 1st). @Seymour Glass , if you could tell us the date that chat you took the screencaps from that would be helpful. Before this, the only message including both Sim and @FROG was a communique Dave Sim had a fan fax to Bleeding Cool addressed to him regarding Frog's claims that Darwyn Cooke was Comicsgate.



View attachment 1956066

Dave Sim was an admitted Pedo/MAP in 1985 when it came to this little girl (the "first" one). What makes him a creep is that while he understands that other people who can throw him in jail know it's wrong, he doesn't actually know why it's wrong and hasn't purged that stupid fantasy from his mind. He never actually slept with her as a child even though he admittedly loved her. Enter the virtuous non-practicing pedophile.

It's not uncommon, I don't think, although that had been my first experience with it: Pretty underage girls are astonishingly pretty because they aren't fully grown: their features are cuter and tinier than they will be when they reach adulthood.

There's a picture of us together that I did a 400% enlargement of on the office photocopier that's the centerpiece of a bunch of Judith photos I have in my bedroom at the Off-White House. That particular picture has always been very important to me because I remember thinking as I set the timer, "This is the happiest I've ever been in my life." And it still is. Wrong as it was, you can't pretend that your happiest moment wasn't your happiest moment.


(Coincidentally enough I had just framed the Gam Jam shot of her and me and Art Adams and Butch slash Jackson and Bob Durden this morning.)

The guy was completely oblivious to how stupid he sounded and his admission of being wrong took second seat to expressing what real happiness meant to him. And it meant to be happy with Judith the 13 year old. And he deserves the obscurity as bad as that sounds.

I think what starts the "STAN LEE EVIL" thing (and I even fell for that for a little back when I was getting into comics) is the fact that Ditko and Kirby did get screwed over, as did most of the great artists who gave Marvel and DC their creations just to be kicked aside. It didnt happen to them as bad as Jerry Seigle and Joe Shuster, but it did happen, and I think a lot of people are mad at things none of us were around for.

It's easier to believe Stan's a bad guy when he's the face of Marvel (and comics in general) and Kirby and Ditko didn't always get what they deserved, than it is to take a step back and say "well I wasnt there" and realize how it all became a he said/she said.

A lot of people dont realize that if Stan wasn't the promoter he was, then we wouldnt even have the comics that they're all complaining Kirby and Ditko were screwed over on. Things would be a lot different without Stan.

That being said, I dont agree with you on Stan being underrated, but he does get dumb hate from Alan Moore neckbeard types.

Stan mellowed out over the years and helped make up for the damage he had done earlier. To his credit he seemed to try to reach out to Kirby at least, but Kirby had fallen into a bit of a rut toward the end and wasn't in the best position to forgive and forget unless Stan was prepared to make an astounding act of generosity in his direction. Stan Lee has done far more for Marvel as a promoter and mascot than he ever did as a writer, but he was extremely fortunate to be around the creative genius of the artists he worked with. Kirby could never be overrated, especially considering how little of a return he received from his slavish efforts while he was alive. Stan was still needed, but most importantly he had the grace to acknowledge Kirby in his later years so all can be forgiven.

 

[Newman's Lovechild]

I have to hand it to Seymour, he made this thread a hell of a lot more entertaining when it threatened to turn into Nasser's hugbox again.

They would actually try to craft something truly great and study an existing character well to give fans something they'll enjoy rather than force something politically charged down everyone's throats and calling them bigots

I'll level with you. I had to read to this line before I could tell you were talking about the mainstream, not comicsgate.

 

[Dong-Liquor]

Since we're all having a good healthy slapfight over the comics 'art', or lack thereof, I have a small heresy that I want to vent here.

I know there's this comics orthodoxy of Stan Lee being the bad guy hack. And Kirby/Ditko being the good guy artists. For example, Alan Moore never missed an opportunity to take a jab at Stan, when Stan was alive, and I think that had a big influence on the general consensus, especially at the more high-falutin' end of comicbook dorkdom.

But I've got to say, I'm not on board with it. I think Kirby and Ditko are overrated! And Stan is underrated.

Now before comics dorks start flinging shit at me, let me explain why I have come to this line of heretical comics dork wrongthinking.

In bullet points:

- Kirby's solo stuff isn't that good! Comics dorks are often afraid to admit this directly, but they do sometimes admit it. Why just the other day, Art Thibert and Dan Fraga were discussing Kirby on Dan's channel, they're huge fans of his but even they concede that his solo stuff is too nuts/all over the place to be very enjoyable.

- However you CAN point to Stan collaborating with another artist, the BD artist Moebius, and what was the result? A goddamn amazing masterpiece of a comic, Silver Surfer Parable, better than any Marvel comic Stan ever did AND better than Moebius's self-written stuff.

So I think Stan gets a bad rap because comics dorks fetishize and masturbate over the art, but their monkey brains cannot perceive genius in the intangibles of language, communication and thought, such as was possessed by Stan. I think Stan's verbal and social abilities were really underrated, almost taken for granted. To me he was more of a once-in-a-generation talent than Kirby or Ditko. He's up there with Orson Welles, George Lucas - a huge figure in American art.

The snootier end of comicbook dorkdom is usually up Alan Moore's arse and down Stan's throat. But what has Alan Moore done really, apart from pervert and creep things up? Anyone can do that, the more amazing achievement to me was how Stan built these silly things up in the first place.

Nobody in comics, to this day, has been as imaginatively virile and commercially fertile as Stan! And probably no one ever will be.

Lee and Kirby were important supporting geniuses to Stan's genius, but the idea that they were the real geniuses, and Stan was nothing more than a parasitical monkey on their backs, seems like BS to me. Stan carried on just fine with Romita, Buscema, later Moebius, and just kept making great stuff, for decades.

Look at this video, you can see that even as a decaying old man on the brink of death who can barely hear or see anything, he still manages to be sharper and cooler than the entire Image crew. He makes them all look like awkward dorky squares:

Watching this video, in my mind there's no doubt who was the real heart and soul of comics. Stan the Man!

The only comics guy who has really come close to Stan for stardom/success is Todd McFarlane, but he really can't write at all. Look at this brutal savaging of the latest issue of Spawn, from a recent mini-review by that guy RJ from The Fourth Age:



Now compare that to me with Stan Lee, I can read a Spider-Man comic from the early sixties with him and Ditko, or from the late nineties with him and Romita, and they're both great fun, enjoyable, entertaining comics. They leave me as pleased as Spawn left RJ disgusted. And these Spideys feel completely coherent, despite being made decades apart, with different artists drawing it.

The thing about Stan is that he IS cornball, hokey, cliche, all the bad things according to snootier writers. But they miss the genius of how he made incredibly entertaining, pleasing, widely-appealing comics out of it, blending it all into a vast yet coherent imaginative universe.

I would compare it to how genius comedians can come on stage and barely say anything, or say something innocuous, but due to their skills of timing, expression and so on, they can get the whole crowd rolling with laughter, without them really understanding why they're laughing.

Stan is like that with comics! You can read them and say they're hokey, cliche and so on. But you WILL enjoy them, and you won't really be able to explain why.

I'm with you on pretty much this whole post. I hold reverence for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but I recognize that Stan was the right man for promoting the works. Jack did get the short end but he could have been part of the promotion as well and did not. His other works didn't stick as well without being ran through someone else. You can point to the Fourth World as having an impact in DC comics, but that wasn't until that was brought into the DC universe... after he had left DC. He had the ideas, but other people had to make them work. That was the role Stan had in their partnership. It's similar to George Lucas. The first three Star Wars movies had other people involved in the story to make George's vision work better, then the prequel trilogy was made with George having nobody to fix the things that didn't work and they were seen as a disappointment (at least until Disney came along and fucked everything up). Getting back to Kirby though, the stuff he put out in the later years just didn't get much traction. I have some of the Topps comics he put out, and I could probably name the titles here and nobody would recognize them. I think Jack needed somebody to work with to make his works as great as they could have been.