Considering how he goes on to spell “your” and “weasel,” I just figured “Commiecon” was another colorful typo/spelling error. Thanks for catching that!

Busiek twerp? That man WILL THROW DOWN IF NEED BE!

Man, this Olney guy sounds like king asshat of the new AND old year.

I thought “wesaael” was something the hip kids say, like “wazzzuuup.”

Didn’t Wesaael replace Batman for a time, back in the bad old days?

Or am I thinking of DeadPool?

//\Oo/\\

holy pigfluffing clap, it’s like watching a train wreck, only one in which the train crashed into a 747 and a t-rex. how can this olney clown dig himself that deep and just keep digging?

I think we need the UN to intervene here.

I’m scared to even comment on this, as it will indirectly make me a part of it.

I need a shower. Probably because I smell.

“What’s a “Wesaael”?”

I think you have to kill 250 million of them in World of Warcraft.

“What’s a “Wesaael”?”

It’s the best part of Xmas! “Let’s go Wesaaelling!”

The thread’s not over because the court actions against Olney aren’t over. In fact, a freelancer won a judgement for $2400 against Olney today.

And I think ADD gets the win for funniest comment.

Gail

I get that, Ziga, but Graeme, and I do like him, is only interested in the worst. That’s what his website was about and it’s what he writes about now. In a hundred pages of threads, that’s probably the meanest thing I said (after everything from being called a whore repeatedly to physical threats), and that only because he was saying some genuinely racist and homophobic shit and I have no patience for that on the best of days. As I’ve said often, who cares what the guy thinks of me? He’s a weirdo deadbeat. But it’s 2007 and I think it’s disgusting to be making racist and homophobic comments at people who disagree with you. Everyone has a hot button, that’s one of mine.

Graeme’s never going to write about all the good stuff that came out of that thread, unfortunately, because it’s not as fun to read, maybe. Which is why, I’m sorry, but I think this charge is a little bit horsepoo. I liked Fanboy Rampage as much as anyone, but we’re not talking about hurt feelings here or the ending of Civil War, we’re talking about people cheated out of their work and livelihood.

You have to be able to distinguish between a meaningless net kerfuffle and something where real people are being cheated and threatened. I think that’s a pretty important difference. And again, keeping quiet is what allowed Chuck Dixon, Val Staples, and many, many more creators to be screwed.

To those who say just let the matter drop, I respond that I STILL get email from people Rick is trying to get to work for him, he’s still sending very abusive threatening emails to people he owes money to, and now he’s claiming he’s hiring new artists and staging another convention.

We know none of this will happen, but it’d be very easy for newbies or uninformed people to still get burned.

That’s about it…I won’t say I was always a sweetie pie, I get mad like anyone else when friends are cheated and threatened. But the thread has a lot of good things on it, too, and I’m not guiding it, in any case. I just haven’t shut it down, because I’m big on free speech, anyway.

Best,

Gail

Cheap shot, Dr. John - She has as much right (if not more) to comment on the thread as anyone else, after all.

Gail - Ziga kind of gets what I was meaning when I said talked about shutting up; I wasn’t talking about never having said anything in the first place, but instead stopping the dogpile on a man who has by this point become a laughing stock and is more than capable of digging his own grave without the need for people to make comments about anal lube or calling him fucknuckle. My point was that all that kind of thing (the name calling, the baiting) does now is make everyone involved look bad and that, having done the important job of exposing Olney as the liar and fraud that he is, everything past that point is more and more unnecessary to the point where it almost becomes bullying. Of course, you may disagree, and that’s why we have comments threads for people to take me to task on things, I guess.

The one thing I’d disagree on is that I’m never going to write about the good stuff that came out of that thread: I did so here, surely?

I’m not offended, I surf more than I should and I googled Rick’s name (which I’ve been doing for a bit now…he’s posted some crazy shit). No worries.

And I get what you said, Graeme, I just disagree completely. We still regularly hear from people who hadn’t yet heard of the thread who have been in contact with Rick recently or have had a bad experience with him in the past. If the thread were on page 148 of my board by now, I doubt that would be the case.

As I said, and as you know, I loved Fanboy Rampage, but I think the “speak no evil” approach works swell when two pros bicker over a story approach, or when readers hate the end of a crossover. But it does pretty much no good at all when you’re talking about something more serious, ie. a serial shamster who is still to this day trying to find new people to cheat, and I’m pretty sure some of these same people who are so aghast at the pros who have expressed outrage might find the whole situation entirely more serious if someone had stolen THEIR paycheck and threatened to sue them if they spoke up.

Just sayin’. This shouldn’t be approached like the petty squabbles about nothing that made Fanboy Rampage fun. Actual careers and paychecks are at stake here, and it’s easy for some of these folks to laugh about that, but it did some real damage to some hard-working creators (not me, by the way, I told him, after two years of ‘the check is in the mail’ to stuff the remainder of the money he owed me).

Is it really ‘bullying’ to make other pros, retailers and readers aware of a serial scamster? To post updates on new and weird threats he’s made, new plans for conventions he’ll never be able to follow through with, and to announce when a court case is won against him? Once in a while he shows up and has a public meltdown and calls the women on the thread whores and the men gay or Mexican or some other racist or homophobic slue. I have to confess, I got no sympathy for a guy like that.

That’s about it, we’ll probably have to agree to disagree. But I do say again, I’m not the one who brought this stuff to light. I only started the thread when it was obvious he had no intention of paying all the people who worked on his vanity press books, and had the gall to threaten them for speaking up. I think it’s actually a nice thing to see so many pros, from Kurt Busiek, to Mark Waid, to Billy Tucci, to Tom Beland, to Marv Wolfman, to Scott Shaw, and many, many others stand up and tell this guy he doesn’t get to pull this again.

I hope we all stand up and tell the NEXT guy who tries it the same thing. If that makes some poster here upset, you know, whatever. I knew that would be the case and I still think it’s worth a few ‘tut-tuts’ from people whose money and careers are not at all affected. It may not always be pretty, but I like that the industry has banded together to stick up for fellow creators, many of whom are new to the industry and really needed the promised paycheck.

Best wishes,

Gail

Pardon the typos. Jet lag!

Gail

I’m pretty much watching this entire debacle play out as others have. Its been 7 to 8 months since it all began. In that time Mr.Olney you odds are could have made arrangements to take care of this mess.

Instead …nothing. So if anyones getting a good laugh its the people in Internet land like me laughing hard.

Pay up, sclub or are you too weasely to do that?