LIVE WITH LIAM: SWAY + NASSER
Liam Gray started this stream to address the allegations of Nasser Rabadi and his "posting of private DMs with my artist from the day prior to my dog's death, the day of my dog's death and photos of my dead dog". It should be noted that Nasser has not posted pictures of Liam's dead dog in this thread (presumably Liam is referring to the final screencap of the DM thread Nasser where a very partial image of a dog can be made out). Anyhoo, the point of the stream to make clear why Nasser is not welcome back in Comicsgate if Liam has anything to say about it along with a recounting of what happened with the failed
Sway kickstarter project. Alongside him is "Christ Energetics" wearing a Spider-Man, a collaborator with Liam back when Liam was with the pro-Christian sect of early Comicsgate at the time.
Christ Energetics attests to the shadiness of the artist for
Sway (Joseph White) and the serious effort into the project that were being made by Liam and agreeing to help create the trailer for
Sway after his credit for creating the trailer for
Lonestar. Apparently the
Sway co-creator pulled a Brutas and declined to create a contract for this work and refused to pay CE afterwards. Liam recounts how he and Joseph White agreed to partner up on a project (both Christians with similar taste in music).
Sway, described by Liam, was intended by White (the creative director) to be a "teen girl with robot arm in a post-apocalyptic world encompassing biblical prophecy, hard science fiction, Nephilim, penguin people and flat earth" within 48 pages. How he tried to make something out of all these dense and contradicting ideas such as the robo-arm was made out of the smelted Spear of Longinus and such set to a Whedonesque tongue-in-cheek action-drama, but White demanded and edited the material to be played super serial. I might have called it "Sway-dy Alchemy" in the chat.
Liam segues to the negative reception the concept was received along with positive reaction the art was met with and how people wanted to "steal him away", including Nasser. Now this is a bit of a contradiction since it's clear so far that Joseph White was both the project and creative director who also had sole control of the IGG crowdfund (discussed by Liam later). So if anything, Nasser would be trying to "take Liam's job" under the narrative so far. According to Liam, Nasser was going around describing himself as "the writer of Comicsgate" and that if anyone wanted to show up on Frog's show they had to go through him. Possibly the funniest thing in Comicsgate if true and Nasser actually went around doing this. Allegedly, Nasser was contacting artists working with Liam, telling them not to work with Liam, that Frog held in Liam in contempt and that they should work with Nasser instead as he held influence over Frog; in fairness, the unexplained nature of how Nasser obtained DMs from Joseph White posted earlier in this thread does suggest some sort of contact and relationship between them.
This leads to Liam switching to the subject about how the other writers in CG, J. Ishiro Finney (who made this video
staging an online intervention for Liam) and Doc Wright, would sabotage in other ways by gaslighting public confidence in Liam's abilities when he would ask for advice on creating a concise synopsis. Apparently, Finney privately advised Liam to start a crowdfund on Kickstarter as well as IndieGogo for
Sway as that is how he made
Casefile: Arkham's low IGG proceeds financially viable. Liam felt this constituted fraud for some reason and Finney became his enemy since then, calling into question Liam's competence on multiple levels afterwards.
At the same time Liam Gray was losing confidence in Joseph White for the following reasons:
- Not producing enough pages to show to potential backers.
- Cozying up to renfamous along with a secret cabal of CG quislings suspected to include Edwin and Nasser in a CGAnon-like way
- Not livestreaming with Liam to build hype for the project
- Launching a badly formatted IGG for the project himself without consulting Liam
- Insisting on an unviable price point (although as Finney points out, $30 USD for 64 pages by a debuting writer is steep)
- Apparently he had a history of multiple unfulfilled campaigns he did not disclose to Liam before entering business with.
As this was going on, White (according to Liam) was placing all responsibility for working up sales on Liam as the frontman while Liam dealt with the added stress of his elderly dog dying. At this point no contracts between parties have been drawn up and no parties have been paid and Liam suspects his employer/partner is a grifter as Nasser went around entering into the DMs of everyone and telling them not to trust Liam.
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What I'm gathering from all this is that
Sway was clearly White's project, but was content to let the writer in his employ (if it came to a legal dispute, since White was in charge of the IGG and the funds he would be recognized as de facto employer of Liam) act as the organizer and faciiitator of the project while he drew and owned the comic. But as employer he failed to established the basics of professional practices or even clear relationships (common in Comicsgate projects) and as spokesperson Liam was held responsible for things like the admittedly amateurish and unworkable concept of Sway (in Liam's own words) that he had zero veto power over. Both Liam and White seemed content to allow the public to think that Liam was in charge of the project, but it is very telling in a way that Liam does not realize why White secretly and without warning created the IndieGoGo for
Sway behind his back; the intent to cement his legal ownership of the project regardless of what the public, and Liam, thinks who might be in charge. To listen to Finney's video directed towards Liam, Finney was under the belief that White was working for Liam. Apparently Finney went into business and got fucked around by White after all this later, so White's smokescreen was very good.
So Liam finds himself under a lot of scrutiny for an admittedly unworkable concept that promises everything, high pricing, unpaid contractors, murky relationships and overall sketchy behavior from the
Sway project, is perceived (intentionally) as the person in charge of everything from the outside and naturally concludes conspiracy against him, reasoned to be based on his refusal to turn on Frog or Warcampaign. On to Nasser.
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Liam charges Nasser with:
- Spamming his DMs with accusations that Liam was milking the death of his dog for sympathy, then erasing the logs.
- Liam also has his friend Uncommon Sense as witness to Nasser's conduct.
- Trolling Liam's Facebook after announcing his disassociation with Sway
- Bombarding creator David Jackson with unspecified DMs as he was in the hospital for surgery.
- Shares DMs
- TUG's miscarriage
Apropos nothing, he asks about the "double standard" of Nasser not being driven from CG after allegedly giving Liam shit about his dog in DMs while Warcampaign is being punished for a "bad joke" (presumably the public and consistent posting of memes mocking That Star Wars Girl Anna's dead sister). Liam explains that he defends Warcampaign because they were the only ones who had his back against the Nasser-led conspiracy and propaganda/harassment campaign against Liam (
). As proof of the negative sentiment generated against him, Liam quotes a youtube comment by "Mr. Thondoro", a figure in the Popefire faction-run Fanspeak group that calls Liam a "two-faced lying psychopath who
we will be having nothing to do with". Liam emphasizes the "we" part of that and credits the subsequent banning from Fanspeak due to his staunch refusal to condemn Warcampaign.
Continuuing turning on Liam because he has standards and that They want everyone to be cutthroat and betray everyone and be divided into camps (
*cough* based on differing standards *cough*). Again, Liam has standards, but the standard for people is not to want to be held to (Liam's) standards to the people will enforce their standards on Liam (instead of the other way around) and so Liam has to go. Liam says that he was prepared to leave the past in the past after seeing Nasser on Oz's show a few says after talking a fair deal of shit, but woke up to find screenshots of Nasser posting private DMs accusing him of grifting, along with pictures of his dead dog.
Liam goes on to argue that this sort of cancel culture whisper network interference bullshit is unacceptable no matter if Mark Waid does it or if Nasser does and that double standards are unacceptable, and Mike S Miller proved himself to be no true Christian when, after being presented with Liam's evidence of Nasser's DMs about his dog and the Edwin-renfamous conspiracy, continued to allow Nasser to be on his show (
), allowing
traitor Judas scum like Nasser in. The chat starts to demand that Liam stop reacting to things posted on Kiwifarms for Liam's own health, but Liam says these claims cannot go unanswered.
Finally, Liam goes on to say that accepting Nasser back into Comicsgate would result in his leaving CG. So far these sort of "it's either him or me" ultimatums have gone poorly when Smiller said it was either him or Warcampaign, or when Warcampaign said it was either them or Malin & Cecil. Maybe it will go better when Liam says it's either him or Nasser. I somewhat doubt it.
Vinnie "Vinnieart" Tartamella shows up at the last part of the stream to talk Liam down from the ledge, stating that he for one knows Liam is a standup guy and is happy to stand up for him. This works and Liam gives Nasser one more chance in the name of compassionate Christianity and goes off on Gail Simone and no one listened to him back them and the infiltration of SJWs into comics as a whole. People in comics are, generally, good people who want to tell stories. Vinnie says these anti-CG people aren't taken seriously anyway and are generally unrehabitable in the CG public eye, something about Nasser microwaving a cat and watching porn with his grandparents. It's a lot of worrying over nothing. What fans care about are honest people who can deliver books. Liam is a bit more sanguine and a little less orange.
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My takeaway:
Vinnie Tartamella is a good friend.
