View attachment 2316877
Imagine your this guy asking questions on why some no name website is not asking for comic sales. :/
More to the point, who is Richard C Meyer to lecture anyone else about avoiding the word "Comicsgate"?
Since we're on the subject of Meyer, he announced the other day in a now erased community page post that he is going to be launching a new
Jawbreakers spinoff, the asininely named "
Knife-Hand: Blindspot" with a yet to be named artist. Attached is some preview art of the eponymous "Knifehand" shooting a lime green laser from his hand behind a abstract pile of pistachio, salmon, lavender and beige. Is it supposed to be a building? A wack-ass AT-ST? I still have no idea.
Why was the post taken down? It appears that this fifth campaign, while
Jawbreakers: Grand Bizarre,
Expendables: Go To Hell and
Impossible Stars remain extremely late along with
Rock N Roll Ninja still unfulfilled was a step too far, stretching beyond even the most devoted upholders of the Comicsgate faith.
Michael Bancroft, creator of
The Lucent and probably the most active promoter of small campaigns in Comicsgate, has been trying to spread
the hashtag #comicsgatefulfills around twitter. This finds himself in inevitable loggerheads with his non-fulfilling former inspiration. He says up front he's done backing his former inspiration; customers being asked to support a fifth project while three are overdue doesn't sound like the "customer first" mantra that Simple Zack droned on about what the mainstream needed to do in innumerable park benches and Walmart parking lots. Bancroft elaborates in this follow up reply:
This makes sense from Bancroft's perspective - when trying to promote untested, unproven small indie creators, that audience having hundreds and hundreds of dollars sunken into Meyer's various mismanaged, unfulfilled campaigns is counterintuitive, to say the least. Or, put another way, Bancroft will not financially support Meyer because Meyer's is a net-negative contribution towards the mission of indie comic crowdfunding.
Within the hour of Sensei Bancroft giving the greenlight, student Leroi launches this stream:
07/04/2021 - LEROI - WTF ZACK?
Leroi opens with his regulars of "The Chat", so named as they were selected from some of the regular participants of various Comiscgate youtube chats. As true Comicsgate faithful, they cannot believe this day has come for them to stage an intervention like Nasser and his "Smillerventions, with CG Jesus, Ya Boy Zack. The solemn assembled
- Leroi - The showrunner and leader of the team
- Amanda B: The circumspect one of the team, Amanda was also the author of the scathing 499 review here. Thanks for pointing that out @Rupin
- DangerVanessa - Reborn as "Furious V", she is the one the rest of the panel turns to when they need someone to get loud and aggressive. Half-Sketch, half-Karen, Vanessa is the muscle of the team.
- Lord Crackhead - Previously "Crackhead Jeremy" back before the Snyder fallout with Geeks and Gamers. Reads and interacts with the chat more than the other guys.
This is a tough moment for these nascent Comicsgate youtube activists. Tough but, as Crackhead says, necessary if Leroi is going to truly play his role as voice of the fans. After the obligatory listing of all the names in the chat and shouting them out, of course. Leroi presents today's topic of discussion - Zack is launching
another book. By Vanessa's count,
Expendables is on its fourth delivery date. Leroi's personal gripe was
499 and its bait-and-switch approach to coloring. The fans objected, but those objections were ignored - maybe the fan's voice isn't enough in this "customer movement" Leroi muses. Vanessa is less forgiving at Zack's policy of arbitrary, radical changes to his product like his "bullshit five color pallete" and just challenging the customer to refund their backing if they don't like whatever hot mess he's putting out this week. Crackhead voices his concerns with Meyer's business strategy of unannounced campaigns that aren't marketed and are either late or not what was originally sold - if not both - and his declining sales numbers back this up.
Leroi cuts off Crackhead to say that he doesn't care anymore about the welfare of Meyer's business, his concern is about the treatment of the fans and customers. "Zack has a special place in my heart" says Vanessa, but this is beyond ridiculous at this point. It's all frickin bullshit at this point. Expendables is "late and gay"
at this point, IN JANUARY HE SAID EXPENDABLES IS FUCKING DONE. WHERE IS MY FUCKING BOOK? NOBODY CARES ABOUT ROCK N ROLL NINJA.
LATE AND GAY. AND LOOK AT THIS ART, IT LOOKS LIKE A CHILD BOUGHT A WATERCOLOR KIT FROM WALMART. I'M SUPPOSED TO BE EXCITED ABOUT THIS
SHIT? COME ON.
The rest of the panel starts to commiserate over this tragic change within Richard C Meyer, but is cut off as Vanessa starts ranting again about how she's got enough shit pissing her off in real life, she doesn't come here to get more bullshit modafoqa. Leroi gently prods Vanessa on how she
really feels about this. Which Vanessa readily supplies for another 10 minutes until Leroi brings up his own grievance with the unasked for style change to 499 again. Prompted, Crackhead discusses how "over the last year" (I would argue much longer) that nothing Meyer doesn't look or sound or do anything reminiscent of a Comicsgater. He takes but gives nothing back in word or deed and often in product, his comics are late and gay and subject to him arbitrarily making them even shittier than what the customer already paid for without warning.
Joe Fulton, Bancroft's number two, joins to weigh in on this matter. Joe prefaces this by saying while he intends on being a creator, he's also backed 142 projects himself since Jawbeakers: Lost Souls. Meyer's actions make no sense to him as either a customer or a creator. It makes no sense to Leroi either, if this was someone like Aubrey Sitterson or Joe Glass, Zack would be making videos about this.
Next to join is
Ed Winkler, creator of
Sovereign Wolf, who arrives to say he has $1000 sunk in Meyer's campaigns and he's not going to put any more in until he starts seeing some return on that investment. As a customer, this is an injury and as a aspiring creator artist himself, this discourages customers from investing in him. Other Comicsgate creators like John Hervey, the Diaz Brothers, Chimera Comics, Art Thibert, Graham Nolan all get their work out on time.
The panel then takes a break to read the chat, which generally agrees with the sentiment expressed. This all soundsl like Meyer's "crowdfunding is dying" prediction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Zack can do whatever he likes with what they're teliling him, but Vanessa wants him to know for that for every person like her or Leroi that says something, there's a lot more who agree but are silent - they'll just close their wallets and not say anything. Just look at Mitch Breitweiser and the Saints. Just when I think this stream can't get any more personally gratifying, Liam Gray shows up.
Liam asks where was all this sentiment, where was everyone in the panel when the Orange Koala was nailed to the cross for speaking this heresy, when Ro and Frog invited him to a livestream to complain about the SJWs and had an intervention? Crackhead takes exception to this - it's different this year compared to last year. Liam's complaints were ideological in nature, these complaints are strictly customer/creator in nature.
Leroi is the next to reply to Liam's claims of self-vindication, saying that there were all sorts of shit Liam did that pissed him off - specifically his steep discount on
Xenotype's closeout. Vanessa and Leroi then close out the stream saying that they didn't want to talk about this, but for the integrity of the show as a platform for fans and fan concerns, they had no choice. And if they can't talk about this stuff in Comicsgate, what are people doing?
This was then followed by this video by Richard C Meyer
07/05/2021 - COMICS MATTER W/YA BOI ZACK - BLINDSPOT - WHY AM I ABOUT TO LAUNCH A KNIFE-HAND INDIEGOGO WHEN I'M LATE ON A FEW OTHER CAMPAIGNS?!?
First things first, Meyer explains why he's refunding the backers who optioned for the T-Shirt and signed floppies - the time needed to fulfill it wouldn't be worth it for him so he's just going to refund every backer.
The next thing to be disclosed to his audience/customer base is that he has found a solution to the tchotchkies and his secret fulfillment company's insistence on a "per-touch fee" value-added service business structure and getting out of - he will have all the tchotchkies mailed to his spare room and will then personally put an order's worth of fold-in posters, badges, bookmarks dog tags and whatever into a mylar bag, mail it back to the fulfillment company, and then the fulfillment company will charge a single fee for putting the mylar bag into the cardboard Gemini mailer, slashing his expenses by 4/5ths with this one move. Of course, it took a year of
Jawbreakers being past its due date for Simple Zack to arrive at this solution. Which he says he'll get around to doing whenever. They've been sitting around at his place for at least 3 months
No rush.
Next is the subject of the headline - why is Richard putting out another crowdfund when he already has three that are far past overdue. He understand why the viewer may be upset. But you need to understand that his contribution towards these projects, including writing the script is about a day tops, a bit of news that should please nobody except Shane Davis (CAT PAPPY VINDICATED, COMIC BOOK WRITERS BTFO). Also the artist is already half-way done and that this in no way effects the fulfillment of his overdue projects. Absent is any consideration of the customer's perspective and why they would
want to a back a fourth project when they're waiting on three other projects by the same person.
At the end of the day, Zack explains, it's simply against Zack's self-interest to wait until his outstanding obligations are met before collecting money for ventures he's already investing money in. And since Zack's self-interests are the only ones that matter, the complaints being leveled by these people* are simply irrational.
*unlike Heidi McDonald, who simply masks the name against searches, Zack
bravely pretends Comicsgate simply doesn't exist
www.youtube.com
