Tamora Pierce has issued an apology to Mark Millar, for personal remarks made while criticizing Civil War. For those of you behind the news, here are the remarks:
The writer is Mark Millar. And I am just out of my mind with this. I’ve seen some comic book females made to say crazy stuff, but this is just too twisted. What was he thinking Was he thinking? Or does he believe this is what really goes on inside a woman’s–inside a mother’s–head?These are the days when you wish the characters could just rear out of the pages and sock the writers.
Those particular remarks, summed up on a well-read gossip column last week, led to one hundred and nintey-eight comments on the original livejournal post, thirteen pages here, five pages here, and three pages here. Many of the posters felt that she was being unprofessional and unfair, which is why she issued the apology.
Ms. Pierce is a novelist, new to the comics industry, so she obviously has a lot to learn about the behavior befitting an industry professional. Let’s look at back at some of this summer’s prominent disagreements to see why her comments would be considered unacceptable:
Compare them, if you will, to the general criticism of how editors choose writers by industry vet Chuck Dixon:
[W]hat baffles me is that these “hot” talents are given assignments based on hype rather than performance. Creators whose books are selling steady if not spectacularly are removed so that sexy new talent can take over. More often than not the sales fall below that of the former less-sexy team and never again rise to their former numbers no matter how many rounds of musical creative chairs are played. But those replacement guys maintain their gloss and keep getting books until Gareb Shamus no longer wants to party with them. And if all of this star-chasing (to clean up the term) resulted in higher sales I’d just admit I’m clueless and go away. But each month’s figures prove me right. It’s a slow downward spiral but its ever downward.
In the end, it shows a lack of any kind of leadership and chases off good talent. I was told recently that to get more work at a major company I would have to “party with” and “buddy up” to certain people. That ain’t me, babe.
And experienced novelist and comics writer Peter David’s response to Team DC Leader Dan Didio’s criticism of Young Justice:
And, frankly, I think that a company that raped and murdered Sue Dibny, murdered Blue Beetle, tortured and crippled Batgirl, and had both Superman and Wonder Woman at various times cold-bloodedly murder opponents, doesn’t get to say that *I* ruined one of their characters.
Prolific Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis on accepting criticism on behalf of your boss:
i call bullshit on this on so many levels gail. i would tell you privately, but you said it publicly. there are so many female editors at marvel, i can’t even imagine what you’re referring to.marvel hired you gail. how is that sexist?
Or reigning King of weird fiction Grant Morrison’s thoughts on Frank Miller’s latest Batman project:
And while we’re on that subject…Batman vs. Al Qaeda! It might as well be Bin Laden vs. King Kong! Or how about the sinister Al Qaeda mastermind up against a hungry Hannibal Lecter! For all the good it’s likely to do. Cheering on a fictional character as he beats up fictionalized terrorists seems like a decadent indulgence when real terrorists are killing real people in the real world. I’d be so much more impressed if Frank Miller gave up all this graphic novel nonsense, joined the Army and, with a howl of undying hate, rushed headlong onto the front lines with the young soldiers who are actually risking life and limb ‘vs’ Al Qaeda.
Peter David, again, responding to personal attacks and grievances:
Well, at least now John is coming up with brand new lies. It’s a complete fabrication. Total bullshit.
And of course, Mr. John Byrne responds:
Just to sum up for late-comers: I am a liar, Denny O’Neil is a liar, but Peter David, whose story is different every time he tells it, is a bastion of truth.Carry on.
Now this just the past few months, but I’m sure if you go earlier than July you can find many fascinating exchanges between professionals. These should tell you quite a bit about how the industry works, but I’ve yet to see any remarks that ellicited the fan venom that Pierce’s little post did. In general, such a little known and new writer in comics as Ms. Pierce would barely warrant a comment, let alone such a vicious assault. However, she made quite a faux pas, and I’ve isolated it.
Industry newcomers, if you are unhappy about another writer’s decisions or behavior, never criticise them in a rarely visited and fairly safe livejournal entry. This will lead to legions of fans attacking your personal internet space. You must state your opinion, as loudly and clearly as text allows, in well-travelled, well-linked, well-known news site or message board community. This way your opponent has a better chance of seeing and responding, and all of fandom can watch.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:03 am
She had nothing to apologize for. Millar’s a great writer, but Civil War is without a doubt his weakest effort.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Will you marry me, Lisa?
October 24th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
It’s “unprofessional” to point out what everyone else has been pointing out for a while, that Mark Millar has bent ideas on how women should be treated and behave?
October 24th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Sheesh, now I wish I put a comment on Pierce’s LJ. That comment made me want to check out White Tiger, I appreciated hearing a creator say something like that but I decided commenting something like that would’ve been cheesy.
October 24th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Good grief. The poor lady. She shouldn’t feel the need to apologize for having an opinion just because she was swamped by goons.
I think it’s interesting that Tamora Pierce is bringing in the viewpoint of someone who’s worked in the professional novel industry for years. It could be that she’s used to better, more varried parts for women. (Or it could be that Civil War has characterization and dialogue that a professional prose writer immediately recognizes as disingenous and subpar) It’s just that I can’t think of any other industry (at the moment) where you’d have the fan SWARM descend on you en mass like this for such a comment.
October 24th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Its unprofessional to basically bash the biggest product from your new employer, no matter how true it is. I mean…she wasn’t asked about it…she just went and decided to put it there for the world to see.
Now…don’t confuse me saying it was unprofessional with my saying it was wrong.
October 24th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
It’s rather obvious that both Gail and Tamara received so much venomous feedback because they are women.
Women make up more then half the world’s population, but comics book geeks don’t want any women to read or write or draw comic books.
October 24th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Alan — I’m not sure that’s it entirely. Certainly it has an effect on the reaction, what’s been said, the subject matter and exactly who is reacting. I think also the indelicate wording of the original gossip column, which made it sound as though she’d torn the book to pieces, fanned the flames a bit more than was expects. I’m reasonably sure, though, that the swarm itself is due mainly to where the remarks were found.
You’re right, at the core, about the motivation behind attacking her. These were people who wanted to bully a writer who had said something they found disagreeable. I’d like an opportunity to see whether this has happened to a male writer or not, but in this case the situations are a bit uneven and my interpretation favors location over sexism.
Look at the other examples. Two were on PAD’s blog, which is a pretty high traffic. Two were on Byrnerobotics. One was on the Bendis homeboard. One was in an article on the mothersite.
David, Bendis, and Byrne were surrounded by their fanbase on their home turf when they spoke. It’s futile to attack there, because the writer being attacked wouldn’t have to raise a finger to type a reply. His fans would shoot you down. Byrne gets called a lot of names, but rarely to his face. Dixon’s statement was made on Byrnerobotics as well, putting him under Byrne’s formidable protection, and the protection of Byrne’s fans.
Besides that, everybody knows that you can’t bully John Byrne no matter where you find him.
Morrison’s the oddball here, he said that in an interview on neutral ground. Except, Grant Morrison has almost no personal internet presence that I’ve been able to find (I did run across a website that hadn’t been updated for two years!) so there is no way to achieve personal contact. A Miller-fan who wanted to insult and scare him would have to do so from his own personal site and hope Morrison runs across it. If this has ever happened, I’d be sincerely surprised. This isn’t a writer known for searchign his name and popping up on random sites, and even if he was he’d hardly have the time with his current work schedule. (Morrison has a hidden army of fans on most neutral sites anyway, so it’d be hard to get away with trashing him without a fight.)
Pierce was completely different. She had a small livejournal account with a small friendslist and a couple communities. She updates rarely. She wasn’t enthroned in her personal online kingdom, or visiting the kingdom of a powerful friend. If she had said this on the Sheroes board, I imagine things would have played out differently. Without a response from Millar, the entire thing would have been forgotten. Instead, she said it where she was especially vulnerable with only a select number of allies to back her up. Easy prey to the trollish mind.
So, in addition to fighting it out on the message boards, they trolled her site, hoping to scare her if not out of the industry, at least off of the internet.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I wonder if Tamora (whose White Tiger I plan on buying, so I’m not snarking here) got slammed so hard because she’s another in a long line of writers who are seen as “outsiders” by comics fans, despite the fact that 90% of these “outsiders” have been reading comics since they were kids.
Basically, you know those annoying guys who pop up with “Marvel and DC need to stop hiring novelists and movie writers and start hiring real writers!” every time a new name gets a book? Those guys.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
A round of applause for Tamora. Good for her!
October 25th, 2006 at 12:43 am
Pretty much no doubt that men get to be angry on the internet and say strong, opinionated things, without repercussion. Women don’t. It’s just the rules… did someone forget for a fucking split second that they have to wrap hard-hitting criticism up in make-nice fakery, even in a medium as raw and immediate as a blog? Oh no!
Annoying trolls… will someone cover this on the feministsf blog? I’m out of town till tomorrow or Thursday.
October 25th, 2006 at 2:03 am
Well played, Ms. Fortuner. Well played.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:30 am
Tamora Pierce sounds like a cool person with an opinion. Just heard her interview and I like it.
http://www.marvel.com/rss/podcasts/Tamora_Pierce_talks_White_Tiger.mp3
October 26th, 2006 at 7:43 am
Good point in this comments section, Lisa. It’s not so much a venue thing as it is a cult-of-personality thing.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
I don’t think the difference is that of it being in a personal livejournal account.
I mean, how is posting an opinion on your own site (which allows for you to filter and control comments) any different from posting an opinion on your own message board (which allows for you to filter and control comments as well).
Tamora Pierce was in her ’seat of Internet power’ in the same way that John Byrne was in his own messageboard, and so was Bendis.
Not to say that the ‘fanboy attack’ was called for (because it’s not) or that it was fair game (because it isn’t) but I don’t think it has anything to do with WHERE she posted her opinion.
I think it has more to do with the fact that Tamora Pierce, in the Comic Book community, is an unproven variable. She doesn’t have her own legion of fans to protect her just yet, whereas Bendis, Byrne, Dixon, Morrisson and even Gail already had theirs long before they gave out a controversial opinion.
I think it has more to do with fans thinking, “You haven’t even written a comic book yet, so what gives you the authority to speak about MY hero?”
Maybe if she had made that comment after writing a couple of books, things would’ve been different.
But I seriously doubt that it would be any different if she said the same thing on Newsarama or CBR.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:44 am
Sam — First, the amount of backup she has. Pierce had a small number of people on her friendslist prior to this. The post was three weeks old so none of them would be checking back to see new comments. The only person guaranteed to get a notice from those comments was Pierce herself.
On a message board, she’d be surrounded by a much larger group of more rabid fans. Not only that, when you add to a message board thread that’s old, it becomes active gain and moves to the front page.
People would know that something was going on, as opposed to an old livejournal post that her friends thought was dead.
The same thing happens on small blogs that don’t track recent comments on the front page or have a comment feed available. Someone, considering themselves a big man for it, will make a smartass comment on an old post. Sometimes the blogger has notifications turned on (in which case it still takes a while to see if its an active blog), and sometimes they don’t. But really only the poster sees it, and they are on their own in fighting it.
Second, the publicness of the venue. In her livejournal, it seems like she was trying to hide it. Hell, read the gossip column writeup, it’s skewed as though he found something she wasn’t expecting anyone to find. Like it’s a careless bit of knowledge that should have been locked.
If she had announced this on CBR or Newsarama, there is no hiding. Just brazenness. There’s no sense of “We caught you.” Instead, it’s just another dumb creator shooting her mouth off. It would get a few comments, a couple of blog entries, quite likely a lot of misogynistic attacks, but really nothing of this scale.
October 28th, 2006 at 4:49 am
Yes, because John Byrne has never drawn equal or greater amounts of fan-furor. No doubt by dint of his manhood.
What a well reasoned and totally not retarded argument Lisa.
October 28th, 2006 at 5:05 am
If you’ve “yet to see any remarks that ellicited the fan venom that Pierce’s little post did” then you obviously aren’t a good journalist…
October 28th, 2006 at 5:27 am
Meh,
Sue is HER hero too, she can voice her opinion if she thinks the writer is doing a crappy job.
October 29th, 2006 at 5:54 am
Terram and jZa1218 — Do read the post, and the threads linked before you jump to abusive language.
I’m not new to Fandom, I’m well-aware of how John Byrne is regarded. He’s has been trashed on blogs and boards, and even made Fandom_Wank a few times, but rarely do people follow him to his website to leave anonymous comment-and-run attacks over writer-writer criticism.
The Flamewars with Byrne are usually reactions to remarks over real-life issues, or points when he’s been embroiled in discussion with another professional.
Ms Pierce was attacked on her webspace for giving a bad critique to a popular series in what is comparatively tame language. She was called unprofessional for behavior that is regularly many times more extreme in the case of other professionals in similar situations.
The major difference, of course, between her situation and the others was that the criticized writer, Mark Millar, never responded. The rest were all pro-on-pro fighting. Which should have made it worse.
So obviously, some other factor contributed to the extraordinary reaction to an otherwise ordinary comment.
It’s probably a combination of the factors listed in the more constructive comments.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:15 am
Ms Pierce had the right idea. Not only is Millar’s depiction of Sue Storm incredibly sexist, but Millar is not the only one who has legions of fanboys to attack in his name. Have you ever tried to say anything bad on Geoff Johns’ message boards? It’s like textual rape; disagree with anything Johns does there and you’re banned–after being torn limb from limb by the dozens of mindless, overweight forty-year-olds that pop a bone over Wonder Girl and Superboy getting jiggy. Pierce just had the misfortune of getting an incredibly large response and by being in the position that she’s in. I commend her for voicing her opinion; she has nothing to apologize for.