Diseased #Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

[Greed]

The campaign is here

This is the description:

Hand Delivery By Me
$5,000 USD
This is the crazy perk. At this tier, I will drive anywhere in the 48 continental United States and hand deliver your box full of Stealing Solo goods. I will also stream the journey along the way, feature you on the channel and interview for a fan documentary that we produce in your honor. If you choose this tier, we will work with your schedule.

0 of 10 claimed

Weird perk. He'd be spending around $1200 on gas and probably another grand on hotels, food, etc. And he was going to offer this to 10 people? Jesus.
I guess Jeff failed to factor in that he has virtually zero star power and nobody other than Frog actually wants to hang out with the guy.
Speaking of Frog, he's probably the only person in CG/TFM who could offer a perk like this and actually have fans sycophantic enough to buy it.

 

[Strix454]

First sand nigga to write a story about shitty sand nigga ms. marvel meanwhile water is wet cause Marvel and DC Comics sucks balls.

So lets see whats under her fingernails.

University of Chicago - BA and MAT English 1993

1994 - 1999 Taught High School English at Niles North High School in Skokie, Illinois (North Shore, Chicago)

1999-2007 On the payroll of several political groups. Lived in New York City.

2013 - Lives in Hawaii (Kauai) for a year.

2016 Becomes a YA Writer at Soho press.

2019 Lives in Hyde Park in Chicago

2020 She writes a novel everyone can relate to. Its the story of an ordinary young girl living in Hyde Park in Chicago whose parents are both professors at the University of Chicago and who attends the special exclusive high school run by the University of Chicago. Just plain folks.....
---------------------
What does all of this mean? She is whiter than white despite her skin tone. She is whiter than many WASPS these days. She is certainly more white than any of the ordinary writers at marvel. She lives in a rich, elite urban enclave surrounded by poor people on the south side of Chicago. She also stinks of money. I was unable to find any info about who her parents were, But given her timeline, there seems little ordinary about her.

She sees herself, despite leading an elite life at the top of American society, as a victim of oppression. There was a person who yelled something racist at her parents car when she was eight years old. It seems to have haunted her during her vacations to Paris and her time living in Hawaii.

She is very similar to Sana Amanat who created Ms. Marvel. Both of them have led elite lives at the top but have somehow convinced themselves that they grew up as "poor" working class muslims in working-class suburbs. That in spite of going to Colombia and the University of Chicago, that they were scrappy underdogs fighting against the man who was constantly keeping them down.

They are probably less interested in her as a writer than as a character to play a role as writer for the media. Sana Amanat is too important to write comics these days. But Samira Ahmed can basically "play" Sana Amanat on a day-to-day basis and do the boring bits in the writer role. She is almost like another copy of Sana Amanat with a very similar background. She has the WASPy manners and education that will make the upper level media like the New York Times want to talk to her. And she will be good when they need stories about Ms. Marvel in the media when they start putting the character in movies.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Warren Ellis' following back in the late 90s and aughts was significant not so much because of Warren himself but the community that accreted around him, that he cultivated to have the stamp of his personality. I suppose what set it apart from the countless independent pleb comic and creators forums around the pre-social media internet was that the WEF community was one of the few, if not only comics-based online communities that had its own distinctive subculture. Not unlike Comicsgate today (which, regardless of what you may think Comicsgate's subculture actually is, we can all agree that it definitely exists).

And while the forums themselves were offlined over a decade ago, Internet Archive and Warren's very helpful encouragement for members to self-dox give a glimpse of who rubbed elbows in there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080131191409/http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=6&page=1#Item_0

View attachment 2294801

https://imagecomics.com/features/an-oral-history-of-the-warren-ellis-forum-part-i

https://web.archive.org/web/20190211231846/https://imagecomics.com/features/an-oral-history-of-the-warren-ellis-forum-part-i

Image has quietly memoryholed this nostalgic tribute they made to the Warren Ellis Forum, which is unsurprising given their cancellation of Warren Ellis yesterday, but thankfully the internet never forgets. Here's a relation of the forum 10 years after its death by now prominent comic professionals and journos WEF alumni Kelly Sue DeConnick, Kieron Gillen, Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky, Sam Humphries, Heidi MacDonald, Christopher Sebela and Bryan Lee O'Malley. Funniest reveal: Chip Zdarsky was the Nasser of the WEF community and it became an injoke for Warren to ban him from the forum.



Sounds familiar.





But perhaps most interesting was Heidi MacDonald's very vague recollections of the demise of the community:



Which contrasts strongly from MacDonald's explanation back in 2007 of why she left the WEF spinoff forum The Engine to found ComicsBeat (that very same den of cancel culture Comicsgate rages against today):

Goodbye, Engine - The Beat

Goodbye, Engine - The Beat

www.comicsbeat.com

View attachment 2294767

(Image of forum e-thot with 'WARREN' carved into her skin helpfully provided by Heidi MacDonald)



I for one am inclined to believe this explanation over the blandishments MacDonald offered to Image a decade later - even without the convincing photo evidence, Heidi MacDonald's description of Ellis as a man who grew increasingly uninterested in comics, let alone leading the comics subculture he founded, as his attentions turned towards TV serials (and writing them) and cooming to goth girls on the internet definitely has the ring of truth to it. Especially given the trajectory of his career since 2007. A lesson to be learned for sure about a leader of a subculture, community, movement (at least in Heidi's eyes) or whatever you want to call it, who over time grew bored with his success, stagnated, took it and his community for granted, and the resulting decade-plus of seething, vengeful anger from the people that felt betrayed in his wake.

View attachment 2294795

Thanks, Heidi

Should note that Ellis kind of killed his forum, partly due to the fact that inadvertedly spawned a number of spin-off forums which catered to different cliques under him without Ellis being on them. Forums that made it harder for him to keep control over everything like he used to, when people had to suffer him to use his forum.

You had the "V-Hive"; which was set up by Nick Locking because Locking was an Ellis acolyte who was pissed off that Ellis kept belittling him for liking Transformers, leading him to pull a Bender and set up his own forum with blackjack and hookers. It was basically WEF but minus Ellis and filled with more hipster types who disliked having to hide some of their more "undesirable" nerd interests from Ellis.

(Ironically Locking had the last laugh; when Ellis folded his forum, most of the comic pros (DeConnick, Fraction, Gillen, Khouri) relocated to Nick's forum; which later changed websites when Delphi imploded (sadly V-Hive 2.0 was taken down due to Gillen and Khouri being terrified that a lot the anti-PC bullshit that they posted there would come back to bite them in the ass a couple of years back).)

Meanwhile hardcore comic nerds/porn nerds who hated Ellis's anti-cape rhetoric but visited his forum because it was "the" place to go if you wanted to talk comics, ended up on Micah Wright's board with infamous comic lulcow/Micah Wright sycophant Jesse Baker being the guy who vouched for Micah to get the likes of Kirk Boxleitner and his growing clique of porno-nerds (the Sanity Assassins; a forum started when Boxleitner and several female posters started making jokes about dildos and Boxleitner's sexual attraction to Ultimate Aunt May triggered Warren Ellis's delicate sensibilities) to set up shop there. TV executive Dan Evans had his own TV/cartoon forum as did Dwayne McDuffie; while a TV executive at Sci-Fi Channel (Ted something) who visited the Ellis forum set up his own TV forum.

Most of the spin-off forums died when Delphi went tits up, though Micah Wright's forum died earlier when he got outed as a stolen valor fraud. Baker tried to keep shit going but he eventually left along with Boxleitner to a new private forum Boxleitner set up, and later then, Boxleitner's live journal page until Facebook came along and all of the various WEF types migrated there.

But in general, Ellis's asshole tendencies made him the bell of the ball until the people who flocked to him discovered that they could still have their communities/friendships without having to let Ellis have a seat at the table.

 

[SaidNoOneEver]

So lets see whats under her fingernails.

University of Chicago - BA and MAT English 1993

1994 - 1999 Taught High School English at Niles North High School in Skokie, Illinois (North Shore, Chicago)

1999-2007 On the payroll of several political groups. Lived in New York City.

2013 - Lives in Hawaii (Kauai) for a year.

2016 Becomes a YA Writer at Soho press.

2019 Lives in Hyde Park in Chicago

2020 She writes a novel everyone can relate to. Its the story of an ordinary young girl living in Hyde Park in Chicago whose parents are both professors at the University of Chicago and who attends the special exclusive high school run by the University of Chicago. Just plain folks.....
---------------------
What does all of this mean? She is whiter than white despite her skin tone. She is whiter than many WASPS these days. She is certainly more white than any of the ordinary writers at marvel. She lives in a rich, elite urban enclave surrounded by poor people on the south side of Chicago. She also stinks of money. I was unable to find any info about who her parents were, But given her timeline, there seems little ordinary about her.

She sees herself, despite leading an elite life at the top of American society, as a victim of oppression. There was a person who yelled something racist at her parents car when she was eight years old. It seems to have haunted her during her vacations to Paris and her time living in Hawaii.

She is very similar to Sana Amanat who created Ms. Marvel. Both of them have led elite lives at the top but have somehow convinced themselves that they grew up as "poor" working class muslims in working-class suburbs. That in spite of going to Colombia and the University of Chicago, that they were scrappy underdogs fighting against the man who was constantly keeping them down.

They are probably less interested in her as a writer than as a character to play a role as writer for the media. Sana Amanat is too important to write comics these days. But Samira Ahmed can basically "play" Sana Amanat on a day-to-day basis and do the boring bits in the writer role. She is almost like another copy of Sana Amanat with a very similar background. She has the WASPy manners and education that will make the upper level media like the New York Times want to talk to her. And she will be good when they need stories about Ms. Marvel in the media when they start putting the character in movies.

Yeah but can she draw Muhammad better than this?

 

[Newman's Lovechild]

Fraction: It was the moment that Western comics changed. And we knew something was happening, but we didn't know what it was. I remember people who, to this day, you will see still writing things saying women and children do not like comic books, period. And then, you go to Barnes & Noble on the weekend, and there's the women and children laid out like cordwood reading manga and buying $200 stacks of books. Fat fucking books.

I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but, oh, Matty boy.

Yeah but can she draw Muhammad better than this?

View attachment 2295297

They're going to bomb Nulls server now

 

[COMMI3 MARK]

I see Blue Bombshell blew DameGang out of the water by hitting five figures in less than 7 days.
View attachment 2294899

I guess one lesson we can take from this is, if you’re gonna crowdfund a fetish book then at least make sure it shows some T&A.

It's even further ahead if you count the $$$ made on Kickstarter in 2019

BLUE BOMBSHELL #1

Don't miss the Blue Bombshell in her first exciting adventure! The Maiden of Might in Sexy Superhero Action! Adults Only!

www.kickstarter.com

 

[Bloody bunny]

I can't even tell you how angry this makes me.

Then you and grant marries should get your capes on and save his ass

 

[SaidNoOneEver]

Then you and grant marries should get your capes on and save his ass

There was a time when we'd have already had three 5-hour streams on this. What's up?

 

[Rupin]

There was a time when we'd have already had three 5-hour streams on this. What's up?

https://twitter.com/EthanVanSciver/status/1408633295869468675

 

[Greed]

There was a time when we'd have already had three 5-hour streams on this. What's up?

Frog's in a weird place lately.

 

[FROG]

There was a time when we'd have already had three 5-hour streams on this. What's up?

I've commented on it on Twitter pretty thoroughly, and once or twice on other people's livestreams. And everyone else is doing a good job covering it. It's despicable.

I'm really pushing to get REKT PLANET finished, and there's a lot more that I want to do with the book.

Frog's in a weird place lately.
View attachment 2295914

Ha ha. The added sound effects are great. Good edit.

 

[Boobie Bomb]

Fuck around and find out.

 

[CuteBunny20]

Fuck around and find out.

Mega Oof!

 

[CuteBunny20]

First sand nigga to write a story about shitty sand nigga ms. marvel meanwhile water is wet cause Marvel and DC Comics sucks balls.

Yeah its not like the Kamala Khan’s Mrs. Marvel series has been canceled for like 3 times?

 

[jspit2.0]

Yeah its not like the Kamala Khan’s Mrs. Marvel series has been canceled for like 3 times?

Is it just me, or is in hindsight allot of Simpy's butthurt over the last two and half years more that he's at the bottom of the grievance stack and that sucks for him as a shitty, wannabe creator?

It's like this Warren Ellis thing. Why be upset? A creepy sex pest is getting harassed by weirdos. Its backwards and sucks for Ellis. But does anyone think Warren wasn't one of the mob prior to this shit? Let these people consume one another. The only reason you wouldn't want that is if you wanted to be in their faggy little club.

It comes off more that Simple Zach's dreams are crushed because if Warren Ellis can't get a second chance, what hope does Dickie Meyers have?

 

[:gold:]

Is it just me, or is in hindsight allot of Simpy's butthurt over the last two and half years more that he's at the bottom of the grievance stack and that sucks for him as a shitty, wannabe creator?

It's like this Warren Ellis thing. Why be upset? A creepy sex pest is getting harassed by weirdos. Its backwards and sucks for Ellis. But does anyone think Warren wasn't one of the mob prior to this shit? Let these people consume one another. The only reason you wouldn't want that is if you wanted to be in their faggy little club.

It comes off more that Simple Zach's dreams are crushed because if Warren Ellis can't get a second chance, what hope does Dickie Meyers have?

Warren Ellis can still work around the blacklist by having someone front for him in exchange for a percentage of the money. I’m sure he has some loser “friends” who can pretend to be unwashed English writers.

 

[A nameless trool]

Is it just me, or is in hindsight allot of Simpy's butthurt over the last two and half years more that he's at the bottom of the grievance stack and that sucks for him as a shitty, wannabe creator?

It's like this Warren Ellis thing. Why be upset? A creepy sex pest is getting harassed by weirdos. Its backwards and sucks for Ellis. But does anyone think Warren wasn't one of the mob prior to this shit? Let these people consume one another. The only reason you wouldn't want that is if you wanted to be in their faggy little club.

It comes off more that Simple Zach's dreams are crushed because if Warren Ellis can't get a second chance, what hope does Dickie Meyers have?

Once upon a time a lot of insecure women circled the geek scene and some men gave them some attention for some pump and dump action. Some were sex positive feminists "trying to liberate them".
Then those women learned that it is patriarchy's fault they are hot messes and the men fucking/orbiting them all that time are pretending to be feminists to get in their pants.

And it is not working for them, as showcased by Warren Ellis

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Warren Ellis can still work around the blacklist by having someone front for him in exchange for a percentage of the money.

The first problem there is that Ellis' name has cachet that few others do, and his writing for most of this century has been nothing special. IOW an Ellis book is going to have to rely on memeberberries to sell anything. Warren Ellis as ghostwriter of John Smith I can't see going places.

The second problem is that nobody in this godawful industry can keep their traps shut. Meaning Ellis would be outed sooner or later, and more likely sooner.

It comes off more that Simple Zach's dreams are crushed because if Warren Ellis can't get a second chance, what hope does Dickie Meyers have?

Jon Malin also babbled on about this for an hour and half. Tedious in the extreme, but it seemed to be coming from a genuine place.

 

[Mister Dongs]

There was a time when we'd have already had three 5-hour streams on this. What's up?

There have been a few. I normally don't cover it but:

Jon Malin had, perhaps surprisingly, the most substantive take so far with this one and a half hour livestream with no guests and no product promotion, starting on this very upbeat and positive preamble.

So here we are, it's Friday and the Warren Ellis thing is heating up again and I wanted to take a little bit of time to devote on my channel. Just a personal message out there for what's left of this dying industry filled with spineless jerk off fucking cuck fuckers, from top to bottom in the mainstream superhero industry. This pisses me off because I think about all the ways in which this industry fails daily, you know? When we go in comparison with things like uh manga and why is manga so much better than american comics, why? Why? Let's take everything and add to it now the cancellation rate of our creators; how little it takes to take a human being who's done literally nothing wrong in a legal sense.

The video could be broken down into about three core themes: the first is Malin putting voice to deepset, personal disillusionment and resentment towards his former coworkers and employers at Image Comics; the peers who he at first looked up to as creators who broke free of the yoke of the greedy corporate publisher overlords that live off the subjugation of artists along with their bureaucrat servants living off the scraps that serve only to further degrade and force actual creators into further obscurity and servitude. But getting a closer view as a low-ranking Image artist, Jon Malin describes his witnessing comic creators themselves engage in office politics and intranecine backstabibing along with watching corporate apparatchiks like Eric Stephenson climb the ladder to the position of lofty, idle publisher every bit as detached from the welfare of the artists in his employ as anyone at Marvel or DC.

The personal nature of this perceived betrayal is evident from the deeply personal insults mixed liberally in Malin's tirade, asking if Image co-founder Jim Lee should have been cancelled for having have sex with his employee's wife while married himself, and describing Image Comics Chief Creative Officer Eric Stephenson in terms that make Richard C Meyer's legendary "Dark Roast" seem like a Charlie's London superchat in comparison:

But not now, because why? Because Eric Stevenson has taken it upon himself to say "I want to put you, Warren Ellis, in a position in front of me where you get down on your knees and you bend over to me and then you put your mouth firmly on my cock and juggle my balls, because I have an opportunity here to make you do that, because of the current socio-political culture of political correctness that's going on. Not because you've done anything to actually deserve this, but because I have an opportunity to take a writer," whereas Eric Stevenson is a failed shit fucking writer. But now he can take a writer to the level of Warren Ellis and say "You are going to ask me. You are going to jump through these hoops that I'm going to tell you to jump through in order to publish your book here" instead of just Image just taking their fee, tipping their hat and say "have a nice day Warren Ellis, thank you very much um for all this money that you've helped us make. Now I'm gonna take an extra step and I'm gonna I'm gonna see what your mouth feels like on my balls. That's what Eric Stevenson is doing to Warren Ellis with this fucking message.

So people may not understand how Image works. So there's uh the publisher of Image comics. I worked there, I used to work with Eric, uh I worked there when Jim Lee was or, I'm sorry, Jim Valentino was the publisher. He was a good man, he brought in good books, he did a really fantastic job. Eric Stephenson, Erik Larsen in my opinion, along with probably Robert Kirkman worked to oust Jim Valentino and put Erik Larsen in temporarily to where the reigns could then be handed off to this fucking halfwit Eric Stephenson. Eric Stephenson is a trend chaser. He always wanted to be the fucking, I don't know, sixth fucking Beatle? He's a fucking worthless useless piece of shit. No one even knew what the fuck he did there, uh when he was the, I think he's the marketing director?

So yeah, I think he'd go out and smoke cigarettes with Jim every now and then and that was about it. But everyone knew he's a worm. Everyone knew he's a little snake in the fucking grass. Eric Stephenson just, you can't trust Eric Stephenson and he is just, is such a fucking little phony little wannabe hipster. So when uh they ousted Jim Valentino they eventually relocated the offices up to San Francisco, Oakland area because it was trendy. Then when that shine wore off, Eric wanted to relocate to fucking Portland apparently, Oregon because that was the new trendy spot to be. So he can up Image as a publisher in his suitcase apparently when he wants and use it, just move it along with him wherever he wants to live. He can move the publishing offices, meanwhile upending other people's lives who work in the offices, that may not be able to go from Orange County, California to San Francisco, or from San Francisco to Portland Oregon. So you know there, there are lives that are being you know impacted every time this company makes a move because of Eric Stephenson, the great Eric Stephenson, who's really contributed barely anything to this company as publisher in what is now, I don't know, 15 years?

The second third of the video is Malin going through the cited transgressions on the somanyofus.com website and the absurdity of trying to frame things like "self-deprecation" and regular social contact as proof of predatory behavior. There's a secondary point in here about how meeting men and women online is the social norm of modern times and how it's a bad idea if a is being framed as proof of being a sexual predator, closing by asking if the professional comic book industry wants to officially endorse this as a matter of public policy and the consequences for society if this becomes an accepted practice.

The final third is Malin calling out to any creators who might be listening, that if you're going to let this slide, you're essentially ceding power to other people like Snyder or Tynion specifically, or any creator placed higher up in the comic industry hierarchy to have power to dictate what you can or cannot do in your personal life on threat of terminating your career. Even Snyder and Sean Gordon Murphy better hope that none of their "lovebombing" of Mags Visaggio could be interpreted as sexual predation under these rules, and if you find the idea of that objectionable, better take a stand now.

Certainly one of Malin's best videos, as it unveiled a level of crude demagoguery I did not think was within the man.






There were a few others:

Shane Davis had his own somewhat belated take on Ellis' cancellation. Davis joined Comicsgate early last year bearing his own grudges over how much of Zack Snyder's Man of Steel's visual imagery and storytelling was (allegedly) borrowed wholesale and uncredited from Davis' Superman run, leaving him denied the appropriate royalties due him if he had been credited properly.

It's in that lens with which Davis' gives his own analysis of the situation; that while Image comics cancelling Fell hurt Warren Ellis, one person hurt by this that nobody is talking about is Fell co-creator Ben Templesmith who is now also out of work, and owner of an IP that is effectively dead; it won't be republished by anyone and you can forget about the series being completed or being optioned by Netflix or Hollywood. All through no fault of his own. Nobody talks about that.

Shane goes on to pick at some of the more glaring absurdities of the various tweets and press releases surrounding Ellis' cancellation, like the impossible condition of settling all 60 women's insane grievances (one example: Ellis' use of 'non-consensual hypnotism over the internet') before he's allowed to publish his creator-owned works through Image, or the outrageous lie that neither Image or Ellis were aware of the allegations made against him for a full year.

Davis' thoughts however drift back naturally towards the consequences of this cancellation - will works like The Authority by Ellis and Bryan Hitch, or Planetary by Ellis and John Cassaday be printed ever again now that they have the stigma of being created by someone publicly branded as a serial sex offender? Where does that leave Hitch and Cassaday and their royalties as co-creators?

And it's really them who are the victims in this, Davis contends. They did nothing wrong, and as artists they contributed far more labor towards the creation of these works than Ellis himself did. Shane doesn't want to start anything here, but a comic book "writer" can crank out a script in a couple of days tops (take note Starlight Cats customers) and really it's the artists being completely ignored as the writer is considered the only creator of consequence as far as cancer culture goes that's the real outrage here.

And so Shane Davis concludes his video by saying fuck Warren Ellis and fuck all comic book "writers". Bravo, Shane. Bravo.

Richard C. Meyer has put out four (4) Warren Ellis-related videos that could be described as quick, concise summaries and repsonses to the situation as it unfolds, along with forecasts of how he thinks things will unfold from here, with middling accuracy.

Edit:

Just Some Guy released this 5 minute video giving his take. JSG theorizes that this was merely the successful, now public campaign to take Ellis down that has been waged ever since he was signed on to the Castlevania Netflix series. The women mad at him were clearly groupies in denial of their groupie status and most of the male feminists now rallying against him are in no real position to judge and that it's only a matter of time before the mob comes for them.

Squeaky-voiced Nerdette's Newstand takes 16 minutes to say that while she believes the allegations happened, cancelling anyone is wrong and that maybe these women should have some responsibility from getting wrapped up with an obvious sweaty lecherous creep like Warren Ellis.

Last and least is Deadwood Dale, who uploaded this video 40 minutes ago. He describes Ellis' antics as "totally normal behavior"; Dale elaborates that there's nothing wrong with transactional sex in exchange for clout in his opinion and that Ellis was having lots of sex, which means he was doing something right. Having sex = success, and success is good. But it comes with the envy and projection (?) of beta males jelly of all the cyber-success Warren (the inferred alpha) was having on apps like Friendster, Skype, and other platforms with the ability to send DMs back and forth with groupies.

Dale notes the video Jon Malin made - Jon is another alpha male in Dale's estimation: He trailblazed his own path, went his own way, and is even making toys. Dale issues a calumny against the cowards who are sacrificing Warren Ellis in the hopes of advancing their own station, the lack of an alpha male to stand up among the cancel culture mob and tell them that what they're doing is wrong. The second half of the video is Dale scrolling through videos and liking tweets speaking out against Image Comics while Dale describes the comic book industry's behavior as a symptom of being populated by nerds. Nerds that demand to be coddled. Then he says they're more like a cult, and that there's no freedom of speech if this cult has its way.

Dale closes by reiterating that these were clearly transactional relationships,: Ellis had an orgasm and the women got some clout out of it (and presumably no orgasm). What's so hard for these idiots to grasp?

 

[Unverified]

Shane Davis concludes his video by saying fuck Warren Ellis and fuck all comic book "writers". Bravo, Shane. Bravo.

Lots of anti-writer sentiment out of CG artists. Shane especially. I'm sure a lot of it stems from dissatisfaction during his time in the industry and the fact that it can often be a writer-driven field. At least now he's broken free and can write the stories he's truly passionate about: little girl adventures with kitty cats. Here's hoping Starlight Cats becomes the LOTR of the comics world. Donal was shitposting on twitter about writers the other day as well. Some people didn't take kindly to his supposed facetiousness. One replier was miffed about the fact that he's spent hundreds of dollars on poorly written books (a sentiment I whole-heartedly share, though in my case it's probably thousands). Jon Malin hasn't been hugely pro-writer either, though he did say something I agree with recently in regards to him being both the writer and artist of Godlike. To paraphrase, he effectively said "I figured since the bar is so low for writing, I might as well do it myself." Absolutely true. Though the elephant in the room here (in my opinion) is that his Graveyard Shift partner Mark Poulton has done absolutely nothing to raise that bar.

Listen, artists: I understand that you do a lot of work to bring comics to life. I respect the hell out of the skill and dedication that takes. However, writing isn't something that should be taken for granted or seen as light work. It's a completely different skillset and something that many artists don't have a knack for. Your book can have the most amazing art imaginable, but if your story/characters/dialogue/editing are dog shit, I won't be back for the next one. I've backed one too many Magic Cops to continue to be forgiving or to issue any further benefit of the doubt. It is very clear when someone doesn't understand story or language and just isn't cut out to be a writer. Unfortunately, that is the case for the vast majority of "writers" in CG, as I've droned on about repeatedly. Maybe these aggrieved artists will actually do better and prove themselves competent writers as well. Only time will tell. Lots and lots of time, if we assume the average CG turnaround for these upcoming marvels.