He's just butthurt that Jack Kirby and Will Eisner have done much better work and are much more famous than he is. Same as when he whined about Robert Crumb.
(Also - notice in one of the things @Debrotherized Luigi posted, Moviebob's commented on it. "I'm don't think" indeed.)
Bringing this back up, because good ol' Diaz is at it again!
Yesterday, Aaron Diaz posted this tweet (which has since been deleted, but the internet never forgets):
Now for context, Will Eisner is the creator of such comics like 'The Spirit', and graphic novels like 'A Contract with God'. There is even a prestigious award in the comics community named after him, and many people in the comics world -of various genders, beliefs, talents, etc.- hold Eisner in extremely high esteem for the work he did in paving the way for comics to be taken seriously as an artform outside of cape comics.
Will Eisner is also Jewish.
The backdraft against Diaz last night from both the professional comics and the webcomics communtiy was swift and furious (even though to the pros, he is a 'Literally Who'. Either way, this one remark may have cost him his reputation with the Big Leagues. Bonus: Moviebob runs his mouth in this as well.), complete with people calling him out for antisemitism, which was a pretty bad -and very real- thing during the time Eisner was alive. Eisner was also drafted to fight in the Second World War and fought on the frontlines. Diaz drafted himself into the internet war against *~sexism~* and has never had to lift anything other than a tablet stylus and his own massively over inflated ego-filled head.
People even on Tumblr also took him to task for the antisemitism in his remark as well.
And just how, pray tell, did Diaz respond to this?
Christ, his designs are fucking terrible. It's the same problem the New52 designs have. Theres nothing appealing or particularly noteworthy about them. Except his are way worse.
In this case, it's some douchecanoe webcomic artist on the internet (with an ego twice the size of Eurasia) calling a legendary and influential comic book artist "mediocre". The fact Eisner is white is trumped by the fact he's Jewish, and some of these SJW types have somehow forgotten that antisemitism is still a big no-no outside of their insulated circlejerk bubble. But in the comics community/culture, Eisner is a highly revered person (next to Kirby, Siegel, Shuster, and -while debatable- Stan Lee), so insulting him like that in a double-whammy is pretty much on par with blasphemy.
I know Diaz "apologized" and infuriatingly, no one will realize it's actually a non-apology (especially the insinuation that he was also insulting Jack Kirby), but I wouldn't be surprised if that remark will be another thing that haunts his "career", next to the epic chimpout he had over being called out for his fetishism of amputee robot girls while proclaiming social justice and anti-sexism.
Side note: Will Eisner's 100th birthday would've been next year, and to this day, people still remember his works. Will people remember Diaz's works 100 years from now, I wonder? Because I can guarantee that while people 100 years from now will still recall 'The Spirit', 'A Contract with God', and 'Fagin the Jew' as timeless classics that have transcended the comic genre, 'Dresden Codak' will more than likely be remembered as some short footnote in (web)comics history as an equivalent to a fart in the wind.
In this case, it's some douchecanoe webcomic artist on the internet (with an ego twice the size of Eurasia) calling a legendary and influential comic book artist "mediocre". The fact Eisner is white is trumped by the fact he's Jewish, and some of these SJW types have somehow forgotten that antisemitism is still a big no-no outside of their insulated circlejerk bubble. But in the comics community/culture, Eisner is a highly revered person (next to Kirby, Siegel, Shuster, and -while debatable- Stan Lee), so insulting him like that in a double-whammy is pretty much on par with blasphemy.
I know Diaz "apologized" and infuriatingly, no one will realize it's actually a non-apology (especially the insinuation that he was also insulting Jack Kirby), but I wouldn't be surprised if that remark will be another thing that haunts his "career", next to the epic chimpout he had over being called out for his fetishism of amputee robot girls while proclaiming social justice and anti-sexism.
Side note: Will Eisner's 100th birthday would've been next year, and to this day, people still remember his works. Will people remember Diaz's works 100 years from now, I wonder? Because I can guarantee that while people 100 years from now will still recall 'The Spirit', 'A Contract with God', and 'Fagin the Jew' as timeless classics that have transcended the comic genre, 'Dresden Codak' will more than likely be remembered as some short footnote in (web)comics history as an equivalent to a fart in the wind.
If you have to shoot down legendary, influential comic artists (Eisner, Kirby, Crumb) to prop up your shitty thing, it's almost a guarantee that you have no talent.
If you don't have any respect for the people who came before you and helped to pave the way for what you did just because they're "mediocre white men" you're a moron.
(And Jesus, now I want to re-read A Contract With God...)
If you have to shoot down legendary, influential comic artists (Eisner, Kirby, Crumb) to prop up your shitty thing, it's almost a guarantee that you have no talent.
I keep wondering how exactly Kimiko is supposed to be an "empowering strong female character"?? She is as anti-social, ill-adjusted and bad tempered as Aaron himself, only with boobs and a cyborg body. This is basically like Nookie Bear's autobiographical "So you are a cartoonist" comics where he presents himself in the worst light imaginable, just gender-flipped and in a scifi setting. Aaron probably thinks that as soon as something has boobs and shows rudimentary intelligence it is "empowered". Wow. Such feminism. Very progressive. So empowering. Wow.
I keep wondering how exactly Kimiko is supposed to be an "empowering strong female character"?? She is as anti-social, ill-adjusted and bad tempered as Aaron himself, only with boobs and a cyborg body.
Well, yeah. That's basically a modern feminist's idea of an empowered woman, a mean bitch. Being kind or polite, especially to males, is a sign of weakness donchaknow. Which is kind of hilarious since that's a stereotypical trait of "toxic" ultra-masculinity.
Male and female feminists write female protagonists this way, so it's become self-reinforcing. Look at most movie female protagonists, most female leads in TV shows, a lot of female webcomic protagonists, and especially female protagonists in fiction series written by women, with Anita Blake and Eve Dallas foremost in mind.
As far as character writing goes, Diaz doesn't have a creative bone in his body. He's 999,999,999 in a billion.
I keep wondering how exactly Kimiko is supposed to be an "empowering strong female character"?? She is as anti-social, ill-adjusted and bad tempered as Aaron himself, only with boobs and a cyborg body. This is basically like Nookie Bear's autobiographical "So you are a cartoonist" comics where he presents himself in the worst light imaginable, just gender-flipped and in a scifi setting. Aaron probably thinks that as soon as something has boobs and shows rudimentary intelligence it is "empowered". Wow. Such feminism. Very progressive. So empowering. Wow.
Consider that he is also a drooling fanboy of Ayn Rand, one of the most regressively misogynistic people ever to live. Not in the modern "you disagreed with a woman about something" sense of misogyny, but as in she had a deep-seated and pathological hatred of women.
Well, yeah. That's basically a modern feminist's idea of an empowered woman, a mean bitch. Being kind or polite, especially to males, is a sign of weakness donchaknow. Which is kind of hilarious since that's a stereotypical trait of "toxic" ultra-masculinity.
Male and female feminists write female protagonists this way, so it's become self-reinforcing. Look at most movie female protagonists, most female leads in TV shows, a lot of female webcomic protagonists, and especially female protagonists in fiction series written by women, with Anita Blake and Eve Dallas foremost in mind.
As far as character writing goes, Diaz doesn't have a creative bone in his body. He's 999,999,999 in a billion.
Yes, but you can be a bitch and still have fun. Think of the characters in Tarantino's "Death Proof". The thing is, Kimiko never has any fun. Her whole life is looking sad and pathetic like she has a premanent migraine or something. Not empowering at all, not even in a "mean bitch" sort of way. For Kimiko becoming a mean bitch would be a step up.
Yes, but you can be a bitch and still have fun. Think of the characters in Tarantino's "Death Proof". The thing is, Kimiko never has any fun. Her whole life is looking sad and pathetic like she has a premanent migraine or something. Not empowering at all, not even in a "mean bitch" sort of way. For Kimiko becoming a mean bitch would be a step up.
I have to agree with you there, Kimiko is sort of stand out in that both she and her creator seem determined to keep her miserable even outside of her personality.
Perhaps Diaz has some idea that "great minds often suffer greatly" or some shit, and projects his own lack of success both professionally and socially onto Kimiko.
Well, yeah. That's basically a modern feminist's idea of an empowered woman, a mean bitch. Being kind or polite, especially to males, is a sign of weakness donchaknow. Which is kind of hilarious since that's a stereotypical trait of "toxic" ultra-masculinity.
Male and female feminists write female protagonists this way, so it's become self-reinforcing. Look at most movie female protagonists, most female leads in TV shows, a lot of female webcomic protagonists, and especially female protagonists in fiction series written by women, with Anita Blake and Eve Dallas foremost in mind.
As far as character writing goes, Diaz doesn't have a creative bone in his body. He's 999,999,999 in a billion.
This is a blast from the past. Dresden Codak is one of those interesting cases of someone with potential sitting around squandering it over years. This thread hasn't been updated in a long time, but looking through it I think there are some things that should be addressed, corrected, and otherwise updated.
From before in the thread: I see quite a few older posts calling Diaz a mixture SJW with Randian philosophy. To the best of my knowledge this is not true. He never prescribed to Objectivism, and likely would've called Rand a hack. The only thing he might've agreed on was unmitigated technological progress. The difference was that Rand would've wanted that on the back of capitalism. Diaz held a more "technocratic" point of view. He's definitely more vocal about it now, but I think that's due to him spending more and more time tweeting than in the past.
I also see quite a few posts calling him a white boy. He is, but he's also got a Hispanic background and he rode the minority train pretty hard in the past. I'd have to do more digging to see if they're even around, but there was a point back in the day where he got caught in some controversy for how he portrayed a character (it was something about how the traditional clothes looked or some other ridiculous thing), and he had to apologize. He started his apology acknowledging his Hispanic heritage and whatnot.
Patreon:
The thread never made mention of how his Patreon (Archive) was set up. Unlike many other artcows on KF, Diaz actually makes a pretty penny from his art.
His Patreon is still fairly successful, but as evidenced by Graphtreon (archive), he's seen better days:
Even with that in mind, he still ranks 11th for Comic related patreons.
For about four years now, he hasn't lost or gained patrons. 2015 was his most successful year. Outside of that he's slowly been losing funding, and has been for years.
He used to be in the top ten for comics ranking, and 2018 marked a slight turn around (for a few potential reasons).
He's currently stagnated at 11, and there isn't much evidence for a return to the past.
While his numbers look nice, a quick glance at the Patreon goals shows why his numbers dropping is significant.
With the drop below $4,500 he no longer makes a comic every other week. Come to think of it I don't think he ever started making a comic every other week. He took months off at a time to work on his mental health.
At this point he's lost most of that steam he had, and he lost a lot of that spot light with his lack of activity. What I still don't understand is that one of the goals was a part-time assistant; someone to help him with the day to day work, and he still took months off at a time. I don't know if he ever hired anyone, and I doubt he could pay them much even if he did.
Moving to the present: I did not keep up too heavily with Diaz in 2016-2017, but back in 2018 I got caught up on the comic. He always took a long time to work on stuff, but it didn't feel like it took this long in the past. One thing I noticed when recently checking in on what he's done I've noticed a drop in quality. I'm not a professional by any means, but some of his work looks weaker than it ever did.
To me it looks like contrast looks off, and the overall flow of the comic has dropped. The pacing also seems a little faster now.
For comparison I pulled two pages from earlier in the Dark Science series: One from the first few pages, and the other is page 66 (respectively) just to highlight what the main character looked like.
The style is more consistent, and the overall flow works better. Compared to the recent pages there is one significant change from the 66th page. He explicitly made the main character a buff girl. At the time I thought he had a buff girl fetish, and other people previously in this thread thought so as well, but looking back at the newer pages she's back to being shorter. I'm not sure why he did this. At the time he would tweet about how "only men hated the Kim Ross redesign" but now he's gone and changed it back.
His style has changed often throughout the years, but even when it was rougher it still matched his art and had a flow.
These are back from 2009, and while the style is different, it still looks alright and matches the other art in the panel.
The drop in quality reminds me of other artcows like Dobson and Shadman, where it almost seems like they've gotten lazy. The difference to me is that Dobson and Shad still output art WAY faster than Diaz, and they at least have infamy to draw from to get some traction. Diaz has none of that right now, and his fanbase is moving on.
I don't get his Patreon updates, but he seems to be using it more and posting about three to four updates a month now, but three of those updates are related to the same page: Line/panel work, coloring, and the final release.
What is he doing now?
Diaz is currently spending more and more time on social media like Twitter. I thought he only had one Twitter, however I realized he in fact has two:
One for Dresden Codak
And another personal one Aaron Diaz
I only found out about the other one because he retweets himself. The first one is related to his site and information regarding his art. The other is his personal one where he tweets more often.
Note: I made a mistake while saving the tweets. Several of the file names say they are from March of 2018 when they are in fact from March of 2019
These are just a few snapshots into how he tweets, and some other ones I thought were important:
- He apparently only came out as genderqueer this year. I thought that was something he had spoken about much sooner.
- He took down his site to update it and give it a new look. I don't love the look, and it became harder to look for specific pages on his site, and it also lost that "older webpage" vibe.
- He had to take down the site for almost 4 days in order to fix things around and make it work. I get he's not a web developer, but as he stated in his Patreon he should have an assistant to handle day to day stuff. He couldn't pay someone to design the site for him so it would be down for less time?
- He doesn't like Democrats
- He doesn't like capitalism, and this is one example as to why I think he never prescribed to the Randian philosophy. Rand would never have faulted capitalism and called it what it was: corruption.
- Retweeting Workers Day videos as well.
TL;DR
Aaron Diaz is an odd cow, where his path in life is practically laid out before him in gold. He has the funds coming in still, but at this point he's practically lost his relevancy. We may mock Dobson for being a cow, but at least he's making himself relevant, even if from infamy. Diaz is the type of artist that could be a big name, but due to his own hubris and from my guess laziness he's lost the potential momentum. To me he's this weird hybrid of Dobson and Yanderedev, but unlike those two he has legitimate skill. His output is almost nonexistent, and now most of his time is spent on Twitter retweeting. I just thought it was important to update and throw out some more information about him as time has gone on. I grabbed most of my stuff from his recent social media, but I believe in 2016-2017 (a little after the thread stopped) was when he was at his craziest. After looking through his Patreon goals I'm also skeptical as to whether or not he is fulfilling them all. I didn't see any information regarding the Google hangout tier on his social media.
To end this, here is a link to his website: Dresden Codak.
Update: I found his Tumblr (I thought it was defunct, but he still posts). (Archive from 3 years ago)
I also never realized this, but he had a successful Kickstarter which produced $270,000. He wanted $800,000 in order to publish content biweekly for a year.
He was honest to god swimming in money, and if he was smart probably still is.
