There was a time when we'd have already had three 5-hour streams on this. What's up?
There have been a few. I normally don't cover it but:
Jon Malin had, perhaps surprisingly, the most substantive take so far with this one and a half hour livestream with no guests and no product promotion, starting on this very upbeat and positive preamble.
So here we are, it's Friday and the Warren Ellis thing is heating up again and I wanted to take a little bit of time to devote on my channel. Just a personal message out there for what's left of this dying industry filled with spineless jerk off fucking cuck fuckers, from top to bottom in the mainstream superhero industry. This pisses me off because I think about all the ways in which this industry fails daily, you know? When we go in comparison with things like uh manga and why is manga so much better than american comics, why? Why? Let's take everything and add to it now the cancellation rate of our creators; how little it takes to take a human being who's done literally nothing wrong in a legal sense.
The video could be broken down into about three core themes: the first is Malin putting voice to deepset, personal disillusionment and resentment towards his former coworkers and employers at Image Comics; the peers who he at first looked up to as creators who broke free of the yoke of the greedy corporate publisher overlords that live off the subjugation of artists along with their bureaucrat servants living off the scraps that serve only to further degrade and force actual creators into further obscurity and servitude. But getting a closer view as a low-ranking Image artist, Jon Malin describes his witnessing comic creators themselves engage in office politics and intranecine backstabibing along with watching corporate apparatchiks like Eric Stephenson climb the ladder to the position of lofty, idle publisher every bit as detached from the welfare of the artists in his employ as anyone at Marvel or DC.
The personal nature of this perceived betrayal is evident from the deeply personal insults mixed liberally in Malin's tirade, asking if Image co-founder Jim Lee should have been cancelled for having have sex with his employee's wife while married himself, and describing Image Comics Chief Creative Officer Eric Stephenson in terms that make Richard C Meyer's legendary "Dark Roast" seem like a Charlie's London superchat in comparison:
But not now, because why? Because Eric Stevenson has taken it upon himself to say "I want to put you, Warren Ellis, in a position in front of me where you get down on your knees and you bend over to me and then you put your mouth firmly on my cock and juggle my balls, because I have an opportunity here to make you do that, because of the current socio-political culture of political correctness that's going on. Not because you've done anything to actually deserve this, but because I have an opportunity to take a writer," whereas Eric Stevenson is a failed shit fucking writer. But now he can take a writer to the level of Warren Ellis and say "You are going to ask me. You are going to jump through these hoops that I'm going to tell you to jump through in order to publish your book here" instead of just Image just taking their fee, tipping their hat and say "have a nice day Warren Ellis, thank you very much um for all this money that you've helped us make. Now I'm gonna take an extra step and I'm gonna I'm gonna see what your mouth feels like on my balls. That's what Eric Stevenson is doing to Warren Ellis with this fucking message.
So people may not understand how Image works. So there's uh the publisher of Image comics. I worked there, I used to work with Eric, uh I worked there when Jim Lee was or, I'm sorry, Jim Valentino was the publisher. He was a good man, he brought in good books, he did a really fantastic job. Eric Stephenson, Erik Larsen in my opinion, along with probably Robert Kirkman worked to oust Jim Valentino and put Erik Larsen in temporarily to where the reigns could then be handed off to this fucking halfwit Eric Stephenson. Eric Stephenson is a trend chaser. He always wanted to be the fucking, I don't know, sixth fucking Beatle? He's a fucking worthless useless piece of shit. No one even knew what the fuck he did there, uh when he was the, I think he's the marketing director?
So yeah, I think he'd go out and smoke cigarettes with Jim every now and then and that was about it. But everyone knew he's a worm. Everyone knew he's a little snake in the fucking grass. Eric Stephenson just, you can't trust Eric Stephenson and he is just, is such a fucking little phony little wannabe hipster. So when uh they ousted Jim Valentino they eventually relocated the offices up to San Francisco, Oakland area because it was trendy. Then when that shine wore off, Eric wanted to relocate to fucking Portland apparently, Oregon because that was the new trendy spot to be. So he can up Image as a publisher in his suitcase apparently when he wants and use it, just move it along with him wherever he wants to live. He can move the publishing offices, meanwhile upending other people's lives who work in the offices, that may not be able to go from Orange County, California to San Francisco, or from San Francisco to Portland Oregon. So you know there, there are lives that are being you know impacted every time this company makes a move because of Eric Stephenson, the great Eric Stephenson, who's really contributed barely anything to this company as publisher in what is now, I don't know, 15 years?
The second third of the video is Malin going through the cited transgressions on the somanyofus.com website and the absurdity of trying to frame things like "self-deprecation" and regular social contact as proof of predatory behavior. There's a secondary point in here about how meeting men and women online is the social norm of modern times and how it's a bad idea if a is being framed as proof of being a sexual predator, closing by asking if the professional comic book industry wants to officially endorse this as a matter of public policy and the consequences for society if this becomes an accepted practice.
The final third is Malin calling out to any creators who might be listening, that if you're going to let this slide, you're essentially ceding power to other people like Snyder or Tynion specifically, or any creator placed higher up in the comic industry hierarchy to have power to dictate what you can or cannot do in your personal life on threat of terminating your career. Even Snyder and Sean Gordon Murphy better hope that none of their "lovebombing" of Mags Visaggio could be interpreted as sexual predation under these rules, and if you find the idea of that objectionable, better take a stand now.
Certainly one of Malin's best videos, as it unveiled a level of crude demagoguery I did not think was within the man.
There were a few others:
Shane Davis had his own somewhat belated take on Ellis' cancellation. Davis joined Comicsgate early last year bearing his own grudges over how much of Zack Snyder's
Man of Steel's visual imagery and storytelling was (allegedly) borrowed wholesale and uncredited from Davis' Superman run, leaving him denied the appropriate royalties due him if he had been credited properly.
It's in that lens with which Davis' gives his own analysis of the situation; that while Image comics cancelling
Fell hurt Warren Ellis, one person hurt by this that nobody is talking about is
Fell co-creator Ben Templesmith who is now also out of work, and owner of an IP that is effectively dead; it won't be republished by anyone and you can forget about the series being completed or being optioned by Netflix or Hollywood. All through no fault of his own. Nobody talks about that.
Shane goes on to pick at some of the more glaring absurdities of the various tweets and press releases surrounding Ellis' cancellation, like the impossible condition of settling all 60 women's insane grievances (one example: Ellis' use of 'non-consensual hypnotism over the internet') before he's allowed to publish his creator-owned works through Image, or the outrageous lie that neither Image or Ellis were aware of the allegations made against him for a full year.
Davis' thoughts however drift back naturally towards the consequences of this cancellation - will works like
The Authority by Ellis and Bryan Hitch, or Planetary by Ellis and John Cassaday be printed ever again now that they have the stigma of being created by someone publicly branded as a serial sex offender? Where does that leave Hitch and Cassaday and their royalties as co-creators?
And it's really them who are the victims in this, Davis contends. They did nothing wrong, and as artists they contributed far more labor towards the creation of these works than Ellis himself did. Shane doesn't want to start anything here, but a comic book "writer" can crank out a script in a couple of days tops (take note Starlight Cats customers) and really it's the artists being completely ignored as the writer is considered the only creator of consequence as far as cancer culture goes that's the real outrage here.
And so Shane Davis concludes his video by saying fuck Warren Ellis and fuck all comic book "writers". Bravo, Shane. Bravo.
Richard C. Meyer has put out four (4) Warren Ellis-related videos that could be described as quick, concise summaries and repsonses to the situation as it unfolds, along with forecasts of how he thinks things will unfold from here, with middling accuracy.
Edit:
Just Some Guy released this 5 minute video giving his take. JSG theorizes that this was merely the successful, now public campaign to take Ellis down that has been waged ever since he was signed on to the
Castlevania Netflix series. The women mad at him were clearly groupies in denial of their groupie status and most of the male feminists now rallying against him are in no real position to judge and that it's only a matter of time before the mob comes for them.
Squeaky-voiced
Nerdette's Newstand takes 16 minutes to say that while she believes the allegations happened, cancelling anyone is wrong and that maybe these women should have some responsibility from getting wrapped up with an obvious sweaty lecherous creep like Warren Ellis.
Last and least is
Deadwood Dale, who uploaded this video 40 minutes ago. He describes Ellis' antics as "totally normal behavior"; Dale elaborates that there's nothing wrong with transactional sex in exchange for clout in his opinion and that Ellis was having lots of sex, which means he was doing something right. Having sex = success, and success is good. But it comes with the envy and projection (?) of beta males jelly of all the cyber-success Warren (the inferred alpha) was having on apps like Friendster, Skype, and other platforms with the ability to send DMs back and forth with groupies.
Dale notes the video Jon Malin made - Jon is another alpha male in Dale's estimation: He trailblazed his own path, went his own way, and is even making toys. Dale issues a calumny against the cowards who are sacrificing Warren Ellis in the hopes of advancing their own station, the lack of an alpha male to stand up among the cancel culture mob and tell them that what they're doing is wrong. The second half of the video is Dale scrolling through videos and liking tweets speaking out against Image Comics while Dale describes the comic book industry's behavior as a symptom of being populated by nerds. Nerds that demand to be coddled. Then he says they're more like a cult, and that there's no freedom of speech if this cult has its way.
Dale closes by reiterating that these were clearly transactional relationships,: Ellis had an orgasm and the women got some clout out of it (and presumably no orgasm). What's so hard for these idiots to grasp?
