#Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
You see, in a healthy polity there's often a forum or a political organ where people can challenge accepted values and ideas and determine what is actually true vs what is merely dogma upheld by the majority as true. Like a Congress, a summit or a Presidium. Comicsgate by contrast has Liam Gray, who will take something the Comicsgate rank and file bleat as true and angrily attack anyone who questions it and actually apply it equally without double standard, or take a piece of "commonly accepted wisdom" to its logical end conclusion and force the leadership to take a break from running infomercials and/or drunkenly yelling over each other at a 2AM livestream to actually acknowledge reality.

One such case was the matter of customer rights absolutism and vanguardism, asking questions like how it was fair that little people were getting vetted for "anti-CG/SJW associations" while CG Jesus Simple Zack can get his pinups with enemies of the people like Sashi promoted on CAPS, backwardly arriving at the conclusion that everyone should be underneath the self-imposed boot equally instead of the selective, self-serving manner in which said boot was applied (never forget #CGOnly w/ special cover by Andrew Huerta). Another was putting an end to the commonly accepted "IndieGoGo is the only platform CGers should support out of solidarity against cancel culture" creed after he got IndieGogo to take down Jon del Arroz's campaign. In this sense Liam provides a unique and invaluable service to everyone in Comicsgate (except Jon).
He actually cracked the code (boobs) in a video the other day.
@Mister Dongs CG Orthodoxy has been the bane of CG and the joy of the farms.
At its core, CG is an anarchic reaction movement and trying to impose a rule set to it will always lead to all sorts of schisms and scamps. Simple Zack can do what Simple Zack wants because he has a platform. People without a platform should comply to what Malin says or just grab an oar. Trying to impose laws, ethics and logic to the crowdfunding comics jungle is moot - and hilarious when you add spergs like WC or Liam

I yearn for the days when bloody coups and violent revolutions could renew a cursed and afflicted nation in cleansing fire, but I'll take crashing the mall with frens.

 
Who would people here consider as a success within the brief tenure of Comicsgate - as in, reasonable fulfillment, decent product and fair sales?

From what I can see… probably Shane Davis, Billy Tucci, Graham Nolan; Zack I suppose when you consider his overall work. I’m an ultra-casual observer mind you so forgive the shitposting.
 
Who would people here consider as a success within the brief tenure of Comicsgate - as in, reasonable fulfillment, decent product and fair sales?

From what I can see… probably Shane Davis, Billy Tucci, Graham Nolan; Zack I suppose when you consider his overall work. I’m an ultra-casual observer mind you so forgive the shitposting.

Shane has Only delivered on one book So far, so he’d be on the low end of the Spectrum for now. Graham Nolan delivered pretty fast on The Chenoo. Don’t know about Alien Alamo cuz I didn’t buy it.

Billy Tucci has been doing this shit forever and showed Ethan the ropes so I’d consider him the biggest success.

And Zack whether you like him or not, will always be a legend cuz he pretty much kickstarted the whole CG movement into overdrive. But I place him on the bottom cuz of his late fulfillments and his bad habit of starting multiple new campaigns while still not fulfilling the old ones. Also his books are subpar especially compared to the rest of the guys you mentioned.
 
YaNiggaZack trying to decode the toughest nut to crack of them all, i.e. how can a team of mature adults with a consistent business strategy and a coherent creative approach towards comic book making be so successful at what is essentially still a side hustle for them?

 
BTW, CYBERFROG 2: REKT PLANET is done. I still need to dialogue the pages and about 8 of them still need color. But it's 73 pages long and the art is complete.
So what you're actually saying is that it's not done yet. If you still need to do something it ain't done yet. 73 pages of dialogue plus 8 pages to color? Nice throat bubble!

What am I saying? This will be seen as your Wart and Peace... your fans will be clamoring for an even bigger follow up that will have to take another 3 years just to perfect!

YaNiggaZack trying to decode the toughest nut to crack of them all, i.e. how can a team of mature adults with a consistent business strategy and a coherent creative approach towards comic book making be so successful at what is essentially still a side hustle for them?

I think it's fair to say that maintaining a consistent Youtube presence takes both time, energy and focus away from the actual making of a comic book, pure and simple. You might have access to more money, but your work will suffer. It might even be worse than having a real 9-5 job in that the time spent on social media is near constant for the average breadtuber.

I can't think of any benefit for the consumer besides hours of rent-a-chat streaming conversations masking the attempt to turn customers into devout fans who will forgive every fault and be the first to collect your discarded napkins so they can frame it on their wall.
 
You see, in a healthy polity there's often a forum or a political organ where people can challenge accepted values and ideas and determine what is actually true vs what is merely dogma upheld by the majority as true. Like a Congress, a summit or a Presidium. Comicsgate by contrast has Liam Gray, who will take something the Comicsgate rank and file bleat as true and angrily attack anyone who questions it and actually apply it equally without double standard, or take a piece of "commonly accepted wisdom" to its logical end conclusion and force the leadership to take a break from running infomercials and/or drunkenly yelling over each other at a 2AM livestream to actually acknowledge reality.

One such case was the matter of customer rights absolutism and vanguardism, asking questions like how it was fair that little people were getting vetted for "anti-CG/SJW associations" while CG Jesus Simple Zack can get his pinups with enemies of the people like Sashi promoted on CAPS, backwardly arriving at the conclusion that everyone should be underneath the self-imposed boot equally instead of the selective, self-serving manner in which said boot was applied (never forget #CGOnly w/ special cover by Andrew Huerta). Another was putting an end to the commonly accepted "IndieGoGo is the only platform CGers should support out of solidarity against cancel culture" creed after he got IndieGogo to take down Jon del Arroz's campaign. In this sense Liam provides a unique and invaluable service to everyone in Comicsgate (except Jon).
Liam is retarded, but he does occasionally get things right. Something something broken clock.
 
Another was putting an end to the commonly accepted "IndieGoGo is the only platform CGers should support out of solidarity against cancel culture" creed after he got IndieGogo to take down Jon del Arroz's campaign. In this sense Liam provides a unique and invaluable service to everyone in Comicsgate (except Jon).

And yet my Kickstarter is my best launch ever, so maybe he did me a favor by allowing me onto a platform where general readership is. It allows ComicsGate to keep expanding and growing as we show we win wherever we go and that we produce the best comics out there.
 
At its core, CG is an anarchic reaction movement and trying to impose a rule set to it will always lead to all sorts of schisms and scamps. Simple Zack can do what Simple Zack wants because he has a platform. People without a platform should comply to what Malin says or just grab an oar. Trying to impose laws, ethics and logic to the crowdfunding comics jungle is moot - and hilarious when you add spergs like WC or Liam
All movements begin as reactionary. Or so Marxist revolutionary theory teaches. To use an example of an immediate problem, let's say you're at a party and a fire breaks out. The party starts to react to the problem; the fire. Do they leave the party hall in an orderly fashion, or do they try to put out the fire? Unless of course you're Nerdrotic, in which case you start a youtube channel talking about first the original fire and then other fires all while the fire continues to burn unabated as the partygoers just stand there superchatting "i hate fire" "yes i too hate fire brother hail to the fire haters, the midnight riders thank you for the two dollars".

In the case of a fire at a party, either leaving the building or dousing the fire quickly resolves the problem and the "movement" has no reason to exist within a matter of minutes. Unless you want to address the greater problem of fires starting at parties as a whole, in which case one might want to pursue looking into petitioning the local government into instituting stronger fire safety codes, or starting a volunteer fire department, but at that point you can no longer consider yourself a reactionary group as you have a set definition of philosophies and principles re: how to approach the matter of fire.

Now Comicsgate began as reaction to a problem that sounded similarly simple: woke Marvel initiatives like Secret Empire and All New All Different Marvel were intolerably bad. The first attempt - registering bad reviews of the work through the appropriate channels like fan sites and social media - failed. The self-styled voices of the fans and the customer, news sites that covered comics like CBR or The Beat were too busy jockeying among each other for influence and access and sometimes work from the publishers, instead opting to attack the people they claimed to represent. The creators, backed and informed by the establishment comics news media on how evil these dissident critics were, vowed that they would never stop making gay dogshit comics no matter how badly they were received.

Without an immediate solution to the problem and in the face of entrenched opposition, the scope of Comicsgate went from "Marvel comics are bad" to "Marvel comics are bad because corrupt people have placed themselves in positions of institutional power" and as a result the group was forced to articulate actual principles and an argument and in doing so ceased to be a reactionary movement. Many did, ranging from Christian values to freedom of speech to respecting the customer to sound business principles (all mutually exclusive when taken to a far enough degree). However the philosophy that won the day was that of populism. There's growing evidence in the field of fan research and media analytics that fandom inherently lends itself to populism, but I can think of no better example than 2016-era Richard C Meyer and later Frog with their Trump-era populist message of the oppressed many (the fans) vs the elite few (the establishment) rising to the top. Apparently people wanted to hear that more than a bunch of comic artists running their own public access bible talk channel. Who knew?

The problem with populism though is its inherent instability - without any other overriding definitions, who is Us and who is Them is subjective and always in a state of change. Even petty personal slights are enough to get someone to consider another "not one of us". Populist movements by themselves historically do not last very long before either Us destroys Them (or vice versa), they collapse into various infighting splinter factions, or it stabilizes by one voice coming out on top and forcing it to adopt an overriding ideology.

These days Frog is gently steering Comicsgate away from populism towards a sort of pluralism where constituents are free to support whatever "flavor" of Comicsgate they prefer in a free market system, whether it's Aaron Lopresti's John Bircher-CG or Billy Tucci's boomer-CG or the ever popular and still growing Simp-CG, which did put an end to the infighting but in turn comes with its own problems, not least of which is the notable decline of the vitally important populist energy that both fuels the movement and threatens to destroy it. Without the idea that it's done to spite some SJW somewhere, somehow in the most abstract sense, thoughts inevitably start to creep in that spending hours every week watching Patrick Thomas Parnell or Kelsey Shannon listlessly react to a twitter clip of a skateboarder landing balls-first on a railing may in fact just be a pointless and inane waste of time.

It's definitely starting to affect sales too, not just Simple Zack (who abandoned any sense of identification with the majority at the first opportunity) but even people like Charlie's London, who has yet to reach the funding total she reached on the first day of her debut crowdfund despite positive reviews, still being a universally liked figure in CG as well as a launch stream on Frog's show. Or Skits, which ground out over 20,000 back in 2020 just touring shows like Dan Fraga and Liam Gray's, but the prequel is now struggling to get any repeat customers. Frog, a bit more astute than others, looks to be intuitively course correcting by stuffing his intros full of 2016-era Trump MAGA memes, championing figures like Irene Strychalski against cancel culture and inviting comrades in countercuture like Larry Correira. The change suits Frog, who I would describe as a populist by nature.

Another change is Frog's adoption of Romano's stance on ESG regulations regarding the investment of pension funds into demonstrably leftist corporations and how they're the source of leftist enforcement, which further expands the scope of Comicsgate from "Marvel comics are bad" to "Marvel comics are bad because corrupt people have placed themselves in positions of institutional power" to finally "Marvel comics are bad because a corrupt institution has placed idealogues in positions of control", and in so doing so contests global institutionalized cultural hegemon itself. Quite a lot just to get Marvel to stop drawing Carol Danvers with a flat ass, and definitely not a problem with any immediate solutions in sight.

Beyond a handful of guys like Commie Mark and I suspect Mike Baron, very few participants in CG give any of this much thought, the majority's thoughts start and end at either making a comic book of their own or starting a youtube chat show full of their friends just like how the big guys do it. Even Billy Tucci, the third largest figure in Cmicsgate regularly registers his befuddlement that mainstream comic news sites funds aren't running articles on Shi: Sakura and complains that this is "unfair".


Finally I just want to say that these accusations that Frog "unpersoned" Adam Post sort of implies that Adam Post was a person in the first place, which I find offensive. If, in the absence of a constant flow of Frog oxygen Adam Post immediately deflates to an inert flat canvas husk lying there lifelessly on the grass, that's just Adam Post reverting to his natural state - not any sort of malevolence on Frog's part.
 
Last edited:
the scope of Comicsgate went from "Marvel comics are bad" to "Marvel comics are bad because corrupt people have placed themselves in positions of institutional power" and as a result the group was forced to articulate actual principles and an argument and in doing so ceased to be a reactionary movement. Many did, ranging from Christian values to freedom of speech to respecting the customer to sound business principles. However the philosophy that won the day was that of populism.
I find this shit fascinating because it's where you really get to gauge where the constituent members are at ideologically and who everyone is bedding down with, either because they're discovering their own politics for the first time in their life or because they were inclined to hide their power level until the rubber met the road. I'm curious how much of this populism is "principled populism" related to other more specific ideologies and how much of it is political compromise and convenient myth-making so groups don't have to engage society with what they believe on a more particular level, as even if I'm a Nazi and you're, say, a disaffected "classical liberal" centrist, we can both agree that we're the "little guy" and the "real" people who matter.


There's growing evidence in the field of fan research and media analytics that fandom inherently lends itself to populism
I suspect the "elites" never recovered from Star Wars in 1977. They had no idea what to make of "fandoms" springing up from summer blockbuster movies on that scale and thought they were looking at some weird neo-religious movement that they inadvertently caused. It was all new to them and faggots were listing "Jedi" as their religion on census forms, some unironically. Going forward, the first ~30 years was the liberal approach of moderating/diverting it via consoomerism. Then, you begin to see the emergence of the ruling class attemping to co-opt / use what they thought fandom was for their own ends. So, they no longer want fans. They want ideological shock troops attending entertainment media pep rallies. Ten years later their populist ideological opponents start having actual pep rallies while God's Not Dead 3 does not turn out to be the politically ghetto-ization in this movies-as-church reality that they had hoped.
raw-658532636.gif



The problem with populism though is its inherent instability
All the more reason to see it as yet more compromise so people don't have to talk about what they actually believe and who they actually are, sorta like liberalism itself. For instance, The United States was never expected (or intended) to last. It's why they built D.C. on a swamp. It's more an instrument to facilitate commerce, but unless you're at the very top, it's hard to see it as merely that and because of the way it's designed the meaning that you imbue it with becomes necessarily vague.


These days Frog is gently steering Comicsgate away from populism towards a sort of pluralism where constituents are free to support whatever "flavor" of Comicsgate they prefer in a free market system
The change suits Frog, who I would describe as a populist by nature.
I would submit that all center-right liberals and universalist evangelical-types think they're mere populists by necessity, at least until they come to terms with what they actually believe, who they actually are, and where the stakes lie. Again, I find this shit fascinating.
 
I just counted all of my books and I've hit 1,000 pages of comics produced since ComicsGate began. Without a regular publisher in comic shops, this makes me one if not the most prolific comic creator in independent comics. A true pulp writing legend like an Edgar Rice Burroughs or Stan Lee for modern times. It'd be impossible to have done without the support of all the great CG backers and readers who make sure all of our projects fund, and of course great creators to stand at my side, oars in hand to support each other into great success. Thank you very much to the incredible readers out there. CG delivers every time. Onward and upward. Excelsior. 🐸🌈🎾
 
I just counted all of my books and I've hit 1,000 pages of comics produced since ComicsGate began. Without a regular publisher in comic shops, this makes me one if not the most prolific comic creator in independent comics. A true pulp writing legend like an Edgar Rice Burroughs or Stan Lee for modern times. It'd be impossible to have done without the support of all the great CG backers and readers who make sure all of our projects fund, and of course great creators to stand at my side, oars in hand to support each other into great success. Thank you very much to the incredible readers out there. CG delivers every time. Onward and upward. Excelsior. 🐸🌈🎾
@FROG, can you give @TheCosmicWarrior that "ata body" that he is so desperately crying out for? Excelsior!!!
3339559-9c1c342f9488b4347c0f204b5c5352ac.jpg
 
Last edited:
YaNiggaZack trying to decode the toughest nut to crack of them all, i.e. how can a team of mature adults with a consistent business strategy and a coherent creative approach towards comic book making be so successful at what is essentially still a side hustle for them?



After years of holding Brian Pulido as a sort of comics creator/entrepeneur gold standard, Mr. Meyer continues his fascinated side glance at fellow creators Iconic Comics.
Still wondering if the secret to their success is not their work ethic, not their impulse control, not their relative normalcy, not their business savvy, not their consistent and steady output and procuct delivery... in short, nothing that freaking makes them have a similar business model than Brian Pulido noooooo, it's may actually be the fact that Pellegrini, Lim, Ernst & Co. kept day jobs, the same way Superman works as a journalist, right?
 
In a move that shouldn't be terribly surprising to anybody here, Dean and Vikki have decided to get remarried. Part and parcel of that includes Dean reengining on his earlier promise to move away from CG content. They did a show two days ago on Dean's channel concerning @FROG finally finishing the art on Rekt Planet.

What's more intriguing to me about this recent development, is that Dean will also be doing an interview with Marvel cover illustrator Mark Brooks on the 13th. Presumably, Vikki will also be there. She's been tweeting back and forth with Brooks these past couple of days.

Why do I find this intriguing? Well, historically, Dean and Vikki (and, dare I say, many people who post in this thread, to include myself) have approached their criticism of CG from a decidedly non-SJW POV. That is to say, they have leveled criticism of CG without challenging the idea that mainstream comics have turned into woke dogshit that makes better toilet paper than anything worth reading. This isn't a zero sum game. You can think both are stupid.

Brooks is Marvel though, and a consummate SJW. So while there might be some cross-pollination of criticism (i.e. fulfillment, or lateness thereof), Brooks also brings the whole "Diversity is our strength, buy black pansexual Spiderman NOW biggot!" crap to the table. Indeed, I question whether you can work at Marvel these days and NOT toe the SJW line.

The cynical side of me thinks D&V will platform anybody who wants to talk shit about FROG and CG, since the earlier stratagem didn't really seem to get them very far in the end, but I guess we'll have to see how this plays out. Were it me I would be concerned that, depending on how Brooks acts, this could alienate an already miniscule audience.

Irony of ironies is that, back in May of last year, @Mister Dongs pointed out that Brooks was seemingly gloating over the fact that PP sued Ethan. At the time of this writing, Ethan has been dismissed from the federal case, while Dean and Vikki are both still defendants in the same case. I'm gonna take a wild ass guess here that that whole thing didn't work out quite the way Brooks was hoping. Very awkward.

EDIT: Typo.
 
Last edited:
Professional courtesy doesn't apply when you're not a professional and especially when you think you don't need to team up with anybody on something you've never done before. If he learns from this failure and comes back with an offering that is worthwhile, that will be the beginning of his career. I think he let his junior mafia accent trick him into thinking his sheer force of personality was going to do it. Own the failure so one day you may earn the victory.
 
Other rude misanthropic drama slinging comics people have been more successful. A few of them are here on this site. But professional courtesy or any type of professional behavior wouldn't save this book campaign, only more followers would. Use ComicArtist ProSecrets YouTube channel and Rekt Planet Indiegogo as an example: 145,000 subs converted to 11,893 backers or approximately 8.2% of the sub count. Granted there are refunds and speds backing 5 times over several years but let's crunch the generous and successful percentage of 8.2% on Comic Book Hut's 1,760 YouTube subs: 144 backers. He is currently sitting at 36 backers and $1,660. If he were to convert subs to backer numbers at the same rate as Rekt Planet (4 times as much) he would still fail his goal at $6,640. He converted about 2%. The Hut knows he failed and is already making videos contemplating print on demand or digital. Formats not favored by Comicsgate but a better choice for an amateur unknown who doesn't want to take the risk of paying up front printing costs on a book not even a hundred people want to buy.



1655051542369.png

VS

1655051616600.png

Hut on Suicide Watch? Not even the Baseball Hut is safe as the Mets are losing their NL East lead to the Braves and Philles. The end is near for the Hamburglar.

 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom