Mister Dongs
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2020
In minor news, Mike Baron swung a brief interview on Fox News yesterday where he was able to go from a hard grinded $28,000 in funding to $45,000 for his Blue Lives Matter graphic novel, Thin Blue Line on IndieGogo in the space of five minutes as well as raising $29,000 on his follow-up Kickstarter campaign, While Mike Baron's presence on Frog's show could perhaps be best described as "doddering", it turns out in front of his fellow septuagenarians that consist the average Fox News viewer, Mike is is apparently a charismatic force of nature. Who knew?
Overall though, it's very apparent that God has taken offense with Comicsgate's sins of 2021, its failure to honor its compact with backers as well as idolatrous behavior like the embrace of That Star Wars Girl calendar, and He has saw fit to afflict them with a series of terrible curses like the return of Mitch Breitweiser, another Narzack vehicle and follow up what Frog termed "The Year of Fulfillment" (in which very little was fulfilled) by ushering in what is already being referred to as The Year of Forgiveness (where none shall be spared).
2022/01/09 - TALKING & DRAWING WITH SHANE DAVIS - DEBATE! SHANE & YANZI VS NERDETTE & GUEST
Appropriate for the beginning of 2022, the Year of Forgiveness, this highly anticipated, unmoderated debate between Nerdette and Shane Davis & wife went down a few hours ago. Nerdette's Comicsgate apostasy has been noted in previous posts and she has been loudly challenging anyone to debate her on the merits of the Anti-SJW youtuber scene, leveling accusations of them being grifters who survive by generating negativity and toxicity towards otherwise totally acceptable fandoms. Her challenges to debate have not gone unanswered, first by Eric July and now by Shane Davis.
Shane Davis, perhaps mindful of Frog's outspoken concerns regarding his well known verbal incontinence in a debate setting, insisted on his wife/primary wrangler Yanzi Lee being allowed as a co-debater, a move that Nerdette taunted beforehand a show of cowardice and lack of confidence on Shane's part. To even things out, Nerdette was allowed a teammate of her choice in this 2 v 2 debate. Disappointingly, Nerdette was unable to secure the obvious pick - Forced Adversity - as the two had a falling out a few weeks ago when he made a callout video against another pop culture commentator as a "grifter", Nerdette objected to this smearing of a friend in the comments of the video, to which Forced Adversity responded called her a piece of shit outrage grifting race baiter, blocked her and then nuked his own comment section for optics-related reasons. Having somehow burned his bridges from both the Comics SJW and Anti-Anti-SJW youtube scenes, Forced Adversity went on to declare "victory over Comicsgate" the following week and announce the beginning of a new channel that consists of drama commentary/stirring shit in the ongoing breadtuber civil war where Destiny and Vaush's supporters are awash in mutual pedophilia accusations.
While denied Forced Adversity's adored antics like the almost certain taunting Shane Davis with names like "bitchass cuck" and doubtless racist taunts towards his wife in the name of liberal wokeness, there was a wide roster of characters like Blerd Without Fear, Saggy Melonz or Amit Raina willing to go on and "debate" the Starlight Cats creative team. Tragically Nerdette chose none of them, electing instead to invite her morning show host, comic shop owner and consoom-tuber Comic Boom, aka Rocky, an inoffensive and level-headed pick but overall very uninvested in the topic at hand.
The debate opens with some genialitiies and preamble by Shane Davis (the impromptu host in the absence of a moderator) along with some banter to warm up the crowd. This goes on for over four minutes as it's clear that both he and Nerdette aren't particularly eager to start this showdown, circling each other with small talk until it falls upon the most aggressive person on the panel - Yanzi - to force the debate forward by addressing the topic of dylng sales in the mainstream.
Shane seizes the opportunity to speak first and begins a long, unformed diatribe about his experiences within the mainstream industry and the influence of market forces and editorial fiat on the comic book form, shifts in format such as the drive towards digital and collected material and so on - this all builds towards his statement that "in his opinion", comic sales are down.
While arguing from a position of opinion kind of sucks, the first to reply to Shane's argument (using the term vey loosely) is Comic Boom, who agrees with Shane's opinion that, from what he sees in his local comic shop, comic sales are down. But Comichron's figures are an objective metric that trump his personal opinions. Helpfully, at 7 minutes in Rocky follows this by citing Comichron statistics that genres like manga, YA and independent comics are booming while western superhero comics are sinking fast and generally blowing the fuck out of his team's entire position before Nerdette even has a chance to speak. Shane reacts to this by shifting in his chair uncomfortably, his mind no doubt busy conjuring some anecdote tying together a time he was gathering mushrooms in the woods as child to his job interview with Dan DiDio while Yanzi has a frozen expression of disbelief at what she's seeing here.
Next is Yanzi, who cites Comichron statistics confirming Comic Boom's experiences that comic book stores are in decline. Shane uses this opportunity to define the scope of the debate by defining the "comics" in decline as 'conventional western superhero comics by mainstream publishers like Marvel, DC, Image, Boom, etc.' Essentially what Comic Boom already conceded, following this by ruminating for five unbroken minutes on the reasons he interprets as indicative of direct market sales being in decline as well as the the causes he believes behind this decline such as relaunches and event fatigue.
Nerdette, perhaps sensing that going against an inveterate dissembler like Shane Davis in his field of expertise in a debate with no stipulated moderator and no interruptions was a mistake, scrambles and starts interjecting to get an opening statement 15 minutes into the debate. Shane visibly bristles at this breaking of the agreed upon rules, resigning himself to interrupting Nerdette at every opportunity, Nerdette pulls up her own evidence from Comichron, as well as a screencap of one my posts about Shane Davis. She settles on this chart by Comichron indicating record profits from Marvel, DC and Image right up to 2015.
Shane challenges the validity of the chart by arguing that these revenue figures were calculated on the basis of Batman being fixed at 100,000 sales, something that is no longer necessarily true these days and that in truth nobody really has accurate sales figures from these comic companies. Comichron's revenue statistics, argues Shane, are at best an estimate based on conjecture. Nerdette demands proof of this debunking of her chart, which Shane is uninterested in providing. Again, "helpfully", Nerdette's debate partner Rocky, no stranger to Comichron himself as a lifelong comic shop owner, interrupts to back Shane up on Comichron's sales calculations and shut down Nerdette completely. Shane uses this to go on a long-form discussion for the next ten minutes on how floppies are used as an indicator for what is optioned for a graphic novel/trade paperback print run and the decline of floppies can be extrapolated as the decline of western direct market comics as a whole, as opposed to interpreting the statistics as simply western comic customers opting for trades over floppies.
Yanzi follows up with this chart from NPD Bookscan courtesy of Forbes, setting off a 40 minute discussion on the success of manga, some footage Shane and Davis took of the diminishing presence of non-manga comics in their local chain bookstore and the reasons for manga's marketplace superiority over comics, including diversity of genre and prioritizing of quality storytelling. These words began to stir Nerdette's audience, gathered when she was pro-Comicsgate, and they started joining in on ranting about SJWs this and cultural marxism that. "Hey yeah, comics are being ruined!" Nerdette herself however remained unpersuaded.
Nerdette went on cite a statistic of more periodical titles being launched as proof of industry growth, to which Yanzi pointed again at the chart indicating the decline of total units sold for periodicals, declaring that "I'm just going to keep bringing up these two charts until it sinks in". Shane says he's no longer interested in further discussion on this subject and would like if it they moved on to a different topic, after a recess for superchat readings.
Next was the topic of DC and Marvel making all their properties gay.. For his part, Comic Boom rambled for three minutes complaining about how Jon Kent being gay stymied some fan pairing he had of Jon Kent and Saturn Girl by Bendis, but because he's bisextual it could still happen so his displeasure with the decision to make radical changes to Superman as an IP. Okay. It's at this point that Shane, sensing victory, starts to clown around, playing with his soundboard and wheeling "DC are the real racists" arguments as a form of livestreamed shitposting, leaving Yanzi to perform her all-important role as Shanewrangler and getting the debate on the tracks
And so it does, with the next topic of debate on Superman being raped. Comic Boom harkens back to a previous, similar debacle in comics past around 20 years ago when Mark Waid got his fanfic girlfriend Devin Grayson a job writing her husbando Nightwing/Dick Grayson, who then promptly wrote a story where he got raped by a self-insert villain of Grayson's creation, thus providing an abject lesson on the perils of hiring either girlfriends or fanfic writers. In a recent interview, relayed by Rocky, Grayson reflected on how this expression of her non-consensual fangirl passion left a permanent stain on her career (and possibly other things); the lesson Rocky takes from this is that you shouldn't rape iconic characters, which I find to be a fairly moderate position.
Shane Davis expounds on this by giving an impassioned speech on the weight of legacy that he felt when encountering fans of iconic characters and, having witnessed this, felt a deep desire not to make what he wanted, but something that was true to the character's millions of lifelong fans. Nerdette agrees, rape is bad - but it ultimately doesn't matter because this was an "Elseworlds" story and that as non-canonical, all the outrage over the story was ultimately inconsequential. Shane argues that she asks Shane Davis how he can say the same when he raped Red Lantern Bleez (which is to say, the backstory of the fictional character's rage-fueled powers are based on traumatic rape). Shane is, perhaps understandably, offended at himself being described as raping anything, which sends Nerdette for a backpedal and some rephrasing. He then adds that while he created the character, he did not write the story and invites her to take it up with the writer of the story (Geoff Johns).
Finally, the last subject of the evening is broached - mainstream comics and the phenomenon of tokenization; the race-swapping, gender swapping and "diversification" of established characters and properties. Comic Boom is starting to crack at this point, ranting about how much he truly hated DC"s cynical editorial decision to take Jon Kent from a wholesome 6 year old going on adventures only to speed-age and mutilate the character into something unrecognizeable all just to make some faggy YA romance so DC and Tom Taylor can get on a mainstream media news cycle for a couple days.
Nerdette's argument is that deliberate appeals to as many demographics as possible is "capitalism" in action and that the core of Shane's objections stem from issues he's having with the capitalist process in action, which she finds curious for an self-described conservative. Yanzi tosses out some baldfaced race baiting in response, asking if Nerdette is fine with corporations pandering to minorities to shamelessly attempt to separate them from their money with substandard and derivative clones of white character and white stories (paraphrasing). Nerdette argues that what Shane is describing is an inevitable consequence of the capitalist system and that objecting to it is an effectively anti-capitalist stance; her feelings for and against the practice are immaterial.
Shane muddles through an explanation that while DC's beancounters are looking at these characters through a corporate, purely sterile lens as essentially brands and intellectual property while what gives these characters value are the stories and character, and when they race and gender swap the character like clay until there's a Superman tailored for every possible identity group it annihilates the one thing of any true value to a reading customer. Nerdette dismisses this as Shane having an issue with capitalism.
The Davis family decides to ratchet up the outrage on behalf of asian people to the next level; deciding that to own the SJW they must become the SJW and post an article from DC Comics' blog celebrating "Asian Pacific Heritage Month" (here). Shane boldly compares the above with DC Comics celebrating Black History Month by inviting the reader to grab some malt liquor and ride up to a bucket of fried chicken and presses their opponents hard on that if they don't side with Comicsgate against DC Comics, they are the ones who are racists. Comic Boom! panics immediately, vomiting out a word salad and trembling begging Yanzi forgiveness in that he didn't recognize the racism right away.
Smiller also showed up in Nerdette's chat, taking a breaking from counting his smillions to troll and post shit like "yum yum me love dim sum" as his contribution to this very important and gripping race issue raised by Shane, as well as lend moral support I guess.
At this point the debate is more or less over, with Nerdette seething in her own chat while Shane and Yanzi mercilessly wield DC's pandering to asians with crude PR stunts like Chinese Superman as a cudgel to beat their opponents into submission with one hand, and using Yanzi's race as a shield from any criticism with the other. The show could just ended here but it stretches on for 40 more minutes because of the lack of any moderation, only coming to a stop when Shane Davis got bored of genial, friendly conversation with Comics Boom!, aka Rocky. Rocky shows Shane his hardcover collection of Shane Davis' material and confesses that he is a diehard fan of his work. Nerdette left the stream, leaving the clear victors to start playing ads for Inglorious Rex and start shilling on her channel. I didn't know this was an actual rule but whatever. Nerdette then went on to private the stream on her end as soon as it ended, leaving this postscript of the whole affair:
Conclusion: What lessons can we take from this first thrilling episode of Comicsgate: the Year of Forgiveness? I suppose the first one would be not get a debate partner who concedes 90% of your opponent's arguments before you can get an opening statement in. Also the Alinsky credo of never being afraid to use one's enemy's morals against them proved true once again. If Comicsgate has taught me one thing, it's that perhaps Nerdette would have been better served by a loud obnoxious troll that sealioned through every argument presented and conceded zero positions even after incontrovertable proof was presented.
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