SPECIAL YEAR OF FORGIVENESS UPDATE
11/06/2022 - THINKING CRITICAL - DC Comics In-Depth With Special Guest EVS | Comics Aficionados
As part of Frog's renewed outreach effort to find new people and spread the good word of Comicsgate, the previous day he went on Thinking Critical w/ Wes (a mainstream comics commentator) after an extended absence of at least a year on Wes' show over something where one of Wes' guests called Frog and Comicsgate a chud nazi movement while Wes just sat there nodding (I can't be bothered to look it up, you'll have to take my word for it). In the face of intense complaints over this Wes apparently expressed his own misgivings with Comicsgate in
2021, The Year of Fulfillment, with some (fairly justified) questioning of Comicsgate's collective ability to deliver any sort of meaningful alternative to anything and was happy to go along with the split.
Recently though Wes has been showing himself to be growing more radicalized, more outspoken in his complaints with the state of and future of mainstream comics. His channel started growing as his videos have taken on a sort of weird incel energy, with
thumbnails of himself yelling at a Marvel Comics writer's breasts over X-Men continuity errors, and
getting very riled up over IDW Editor Heather Antos' alleged night letter delivered to beloved CG waifu Irene Strychalski. In short, Wes appears to have reached sympatico with the agenda of CG one again and keeping in the spirit of the Year of Forgiveness, Frog extended an olive branch forward now that Wes and his flock look like strong prospects for the terrible process known as
Comicsgatification.
At the outset this reunification was a disaster, as Frog showed up over an hour late while the panelists barely suppressing snide jokes to Frog's increasingly tarnished reputation outside of the CG ecosystem regarding timeliness. Upon joining he threw elbows about Iconic Comics (more on this later), who were described beforehand by Wes as "friends of the show who he'd love to have on" while Frog was being late. Still this was all quickly glossed over by Wes, as Frog still served his intended purpose to further Wes' own
very important agenda, which was to bring someone on with a measure of authority to buttress his argument that Wally West (the third Flash in DC Comics) was 'done dirty' in a number of storylines after Frog drew the comic bringing the second Flash (Barry Allen) back to life and displacing Wally from the limelight.
Frog, himself trapped in an unending vortex of struggle and drama in his day-to-day life, plainly could not care less about any of these bullshit tribulations involving fictional characters that aren't even real that happened 15 years ago, and struggles to wrap his mind around the sort of thinking required to understand the thought processes of anyone who would ("look, Flash comics with Wally West weren't selling. Then me and Geoff brought back Barry Allen and they did sell. I did my job"). Still, he does manage to gather that this is a make-or-break issue with Wes and his panel of embittered, embattled oldschool DC comic fans and assures them that their feelings vis-a-vis Wally West's character assassination in
Heroes in Crisis are heckin' valid, along with sharing his own musings on his personal creative vision for the Green Lantern and Flash franchises. And this, plus a bit of charisma, is really all that Wes and his pals needed as they accept Frog as "our guy" despite all the other shit, and begin sharing bitter recriminations over the past 20 years of losing the battle for control over the DC fandom with the sort of grizzled seething anger you'd expect in a circle of Vietnam vets in a Hollywood movie. So overall, mixed success.
I wasn't the only one to notice this interview, as Thomas Roiloup
tweeted this clip of Frog opining at
1:52:39 of the increased difficulty of crowdfunding given the state of the Biden economy, pointing to the declining sales of Iconic Comics' latest outing,
Black Hopx X Kamen America X Soulfinder, as an example. Now it should be noted that, even with a marginal decline between
Kamen America 5 and this comic at this point in time six days in (
106k for KA5 vs
a combined 88K for this outing), BHxKAxSF is still within 100 sales of outselling the highest selling CG title in 2022 within a week, which would be the second year in a row a Kamen America title has managed to do this (3400 sales for
Kamen America 5 vs 2400 for Jon Malin's
Godlike). At the rate things are going there's good odds that the character of Victoria C Kaminski will be a household name long before that of "Cyberfrog", a thought which I'm sure warms Frog's heart at night. Now, a cynic here might speculate that Frog might just simply be trying to recontextualize
signs of repeat crowdfunders struggling in a way that frames the downturn as happening within greater economic forces outside Comicsgate's control while simultaneously shifting people's focus on this phenomena on people he doesn't like and really shouldn't be read into as anything more than just "preemptive spin".
Whatever the case, the
source of the tweet turned out to be of infinitely greater consequence than its contents, because I cannot imagine Roiloup watching anything approaching Wes' usual fare of complaining/reminiscing about two decade old "capeshit" (to borrow an SWC term). We all know what the SWC leader's content of choice is, much to our shared misfortune. Whatever the provenance of this clip, there seems to be little question in Comic Book Hut's mind that the transgressive shitposter/drawn musclegirl porn commission aficionado we know as Thomas Roiloup receiving this clip instead of him was to be taken as a sign that Comic Book Hut's usefulness to the Iconic Comics team was drawing to an end. Worse, the team
now started appearing regularly on SWC hangout streams even as Thomas sold tickets to his SubscribeStar offering hours-long streams shitting on Comic Book Hut,
accusing Hut of being an Frog-plant to discredit critics of Comicsgate, appending his name to "Comic Butt" and the
general playground bullying Roiloup visits upon the potato-resembling grocer known as Hut on a regular basis.
(Reuploaded since Comic Book Hut has removed the original)
12/06/2022 - COMIC BOOK HUT - DOUGLAS ERNST and ICONIC COMICS IRONIC GAY OPS EXPOSED
In the face of these developments along with the almost certain failure of his Kickstarter finally, after many years in a dormant, torporous state, atrophied neurons related to autonomous decisionmaking and free will began to fire up in Comic Book Hut's brain. Stuck with trying to crowdfund a comic book about pregnant space whales (Hut only seems to partially understand what a whale is) while having burned almost every bridge possible in the indie comics community and his masters seemingly having abandoned him for a webtoon-enjoying edgelord, the time had come for Hut to take a moment for self-reflection and decide who was really to blame for the lowly state he found himself in - Iconic Comics. No longer would Hut be the willing slave of The Shadow. In retrospect Doug Ernst perhaps #ShouldHaveListenedtoSWC as Hut began leveling his accusations against Ernst. In bullet point form:
- Hut was approached by Ernst under pretenses of being a friend, but in truth Ernst is a Washington journo "swamp creature" who seduced him for purposes of laundering damaging information about Comicsgaters.
- Ernst passed along insider information regarding the operation of Allegiance Arts via Mark Pellegrini, which Hut is concerned is an illegal breach of an NDA.
- Mailed Hut copies of various CG books for him to lambaste.
- Doug Ernst, evidently seeing where things were going, starting distancing himself from Hut a few months ago when it was clear that this space whale crowdfund was actually going to happen.
- All the clipped videos on Hut's channel of Frog and co looking retarded were supplied by Ernst, because Hut is too stupid to figure out how to clip videos.
- TIm Lim is a doctor. Tim Lim's wife is a doctor. How come they got all this money but still need to crowdfund?
- Manga is anti-American and anti-Western Civilization.
- Doug Ernst tweeted about putting $100,000 into making sure the latest copy of Soulfinder would be fully complete. Not very catholic to point out you have $100,000 on hand in front of other people who may not have that kind of money. Just saying.
- Hut has taken the slings and arrows for Doug Ernst and Tim Lim for years and incurred irrecoverable damage to his otherwise sterling reputation, potential profits and stellar prospects.
- Brought up covering the costs for Comic Book Hut's mother's funeral in response to Hut's anger that Ernst wasn't doing enough to carry Hut's enterprise for him. Very Un-Catholic for Doug Ernst to have all this money and throw it in Hut's face while declining to carry Hut's crowdfund for him. Hut argues this is all anti-Christian.
- Hut fears reprisals seeing as he has turned over his address and financial information in the process of regularly receiving Ernst's charity.
- Doug Ernst might say that in his past he was "Dark Doug" (lmao), but he's never faced off against the People's Champ, the Hut.
So wait now we have quite a collection of motives. First, the "professional courtesy" tweet indicated he was primarily upset about Ernst's refusal to promote. Then we have the weird Ernst DM about paying for his dad's funeral when he dies... but then Hutt says Ernst actually helped pay for his mother's funeral... which might indicate that rather than some retarded threat, this was a mere continuation of the arrangement they already had, though worded oddly.
I'm pretty sure Ernst in the DM was passive-aggressively calling Hut an ingrate after Hut went to him with his very personal problems, got the bailout to the tune of thousands of dollars of Ernst's personal funds that Hut was clearly angling for, only to turn on Ernst when Hut felt he wasn't doing enough to singlehandedly carry Comic Book Hut's crowdfunding project over the finish line as well. Sort of like when Wenger turned on Frog after the latter didn't allow Wenger to use his platform to yell about how COVID was a hoax and promote
Battle Dragoon Aldrake after Frog gritted his teeth and carried Wenger's superhero cum comic during the Dark Ages of Comicsgate following the Fall of Rome. Hut though seems to have interpreted Ernst's snark as wishing death upon his living relative, because we're talking about Hut here.
This was followed by a recap along with Hut joining to provide supplementary screenshots as evidence on Jon Del Arroz's quickly thrown up response stream, which for brevity's sake I will say was sufficiently summarized by
@Alazmat here. The evidence provided by Hut is quite damning, as not only Ernst has had to go to the trouble of scrounging up the clips himself (in a tweet Ernst claims he was simply forwarding what people were sending him) but clearly labeling them with instructions on their intended use; metaphorically not only placing the weapon in Comic Book Hut's hand, but going to the trouble of curling Hut's fingers around the handle to make sure Hut didn't drop it before seizing Hut's shoulders to aim in the right direction. All in all, it paints a picture of the formerly saintly Douglas Ernst flagrantly weaponizing the retarded (Comic Book Hut) to be used against his enemies.
12/06/2022 - THE BUNDERDOME - CONTROVERSIES AND RESPONSES
Within half an hour of Hut's "Iconic Comics Gayops Exposed" video, Tim Lim took to YouTube to release a state of Kamerica livestream addressing the allegations. Lim was on the whole quite evasive, namely with his refusal to name the Hut. Lim opens the rebuttal by stating he has watched the video in its entirety, but addresses the following, in order:
- Kamen America is doing fine.
- No NDA-protected information was disclosed to the unnamed individual, regardless of what he may think.
- Tim and Mark felt the unnamed individual was a brother in arms in standing up to a coordinated harassment and also in Christ, and feel that nursing entitlements for doing the right thing is patently unchristian, as is performing deeds that one knows is wrong. Virtue is its own reward.
- They streamed with Thomas Roiloup the other day, which might have offended some people.
- He can't speak for Doug Ernst, but people forward him clips of Comicsgaters being retards and talking shit about him all the time; putting responsibility on the person forwarding you videos for your decision to put it on your channel is erroneous.
- Hut better keep Mrs. Lim's name out of his mouth. It is "not apropos to the discussion", and Christopher White is not dealing with Aaron Lopresti here.
- Lim attests to Ernst's character and that he is a kind guy, citing the time he wired someone who until that point was part of a group dedicated to harassing him and his family @The Original Dr. Mystery enough money to bust out of a homeless shelter after (unmentioned by Lim) being catfished in a longstanding online sexual relationship with ThatUmbrellaGuy's wife.
- People are ultimately going to draw whatever conclusions what they want but, as always, Lim says people should be backing Iconic Comics because of their unmatched quality, pricing and content. If you back anyone based on a parasocial relationship, you'll always eventually be let down eventually because we're all only human.
- Lim believes that what caused this change in the unnamed individual was the (eventual) confirmation that Roiloup in fact did write a backup story to Wall-Might 3, which broke something in the unnamed individual's brain, a theory that is without a doubt indescribably gratifying to Thomas Roiloup.
There were a number of response videos by guys like Michael Bancroft and Rob Arnold (who didn't really know who any of these people are) while Micah Curtis and Ben "Hennycuck Infiltrator" Henderson vowed to alog Iconic Comics until they achieve their own personal Comicsgate redemptions. Alazmat probably reacted in some way too, but by far the most relevant response was from Frog, who threw up the succinctly titled "
We Got 'im! DOUGLAS ERNST is a ghey-opping backstabber. #ICONICCOMICS". The contents were much of what you'd expect; Frog hates Doug Ernst, he dindu nuffin against Ernst and considered him a friend and ally this whole time, though he suspected no good, meanwhile Dark Doug was doing all this dirt piloting soulless golem Comic Book Hut, beyond that there's very little to examine in the stream.
It was still better than Michael Bancroft's show though, which consisting of vague stumblings to remember who was who early CG and crude attempts to paint a picture about what was happening regarding various people who have never once been mentioned on the show to his audience before inelegantly transitioning into a standard Bancroft informercial. There was some attempted shittalking of Mark Brooks' X-Men covers to liven up the informercial, but this was undercut by our Australian host showing off his WiP
Lucent 2 cover, consisting of a literal pile of shit set behind some squiggles for like 20 minutes and even the other artists in the chat were telling him to shut up.
Good job Bancroft
By far the most entertaining response was Richard C. Meyer, who was unpleased that his latter-day comic book crowdfunding role model not only had the wherewithal to achieve the success he could only aspire to despite starting with far less resources, but also apparently secretly dab on and alog him for years using a retarded proxy. This all is no doubt very discouraging to the Simple One, who for months has been scrambling for whatever magic trick like releasing his comic book for a dollar or converting to Catholicism, whatever is needed for Zack to reinvigorate his business without having to listen to anyone's advice or work more than two hours a day.
In any case, Zack doesn't want to talk about that, but he will talk about the upcoming economic recession which will put all these "petty squabblers" and their schemes into stark perspective. In a way only Simple Zack can,
he invokes Aesop's Fable about the Ant and Grasshopper and how fate will provide comeuppance for this chicanery.
Conclusion:
So who was the winner in all this? Frog for one got to be retroactively vindicated for years of his unseemly backbiting. Thomas Roiloup got to drink deep of the sweet, undiluted nectar that is the total destruction of Comic Book Hut. But in the end, once the dust clears, there can only be one
true winner:
