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.

Sue is HER hero too, she can voice her opinion if she thinks the writer is doing a crappy job.

What a well reasoned and totally not retarded argument Lisa.

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.

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.

http://www.marvel.com/rss/podcasts/Tamora_Pierce_talks_White_Tiger.mp3

Annoying trolls… will someone cover this on the feministsf blog? I’m out of town till tomorrow or Thursday.

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.

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.

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.

Now…don’t confuse me saying it was unprofessional with my saying it was wrong.

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.