Poor Rich Johnston. He can’t win for losing, if the message board response to this week’s Lying In The Gutters is anything to go by.
Some posters at Millarworld are, perhaps unsurprisingly considering the site’s occasional pro-Marvel bias, upset at his coverage of the Bendis/Simone fracas:
“DC should really get a clue. I cant believe that back and forth. Pretty much every one who reads comics knows…DC can hardly defend themselves from criticism and friendly bashing from across the aisle. Get a thicker skin.”
“I’m impressed that Rich has seemingly got to now reporting what message boards say message boards say”
“I thought Gail and Brian were good friends. I guess that’s done now. Whatever. Grant was talking smack is no big deal. The one thing I laugh about, was that he was basically saying the Skull thing has been done so many times before. And how many Crisis’s has DC had?”
“Bendis and Simone both seemed to wildly over-react to a little friendly smack talk from Morrison. (well, technically Simone was over-reacting to Bendis’s reaction but still). It’s like they’ve never been on the internet or heard someone joking before.”
“Since I was actually involved in the thread on Jinxworld that got deleted, I thought I’d weigh in here, with a few notes. Bendis was mildly overreacting to a small minority of DC fans causing trouble bashing Secret Invasion. I for one, can’t understand what DC fans were doing on a Marvel writers board, but how and ever. Simone can’t take a joke. The same thing happened to me a while ago on Newsarama – I made a comment about some of her recent work and she blew a gasket and went crying to Matt Brady.”
“There’s more to it than that – Personally, and maybe this is just me, but I think Grant Morrison has better things to do than to bash the company that employed him for years because they’re using an element of a book he wrote ten years ago.”
Meanwhile, over at the Bendis Board itself, Rich is getting the brown carpet treatment from Brian Michael Bendis himself, calling him Mr. Class and describing the evolution of the column:
“he used to get legit scoops from angry interns and inkers girlfriends. everyone got wise and its all but dried up. now its cut and paste city.”
Hey, that’s my schtick…
Also interesting – Bendis points out that one of David Mack’s swipes from other people’s material that Rich pointed out isn’t happening anymore. The cover from New Avengers #39 – swiped from Flaunt Magazine – “is not the final cover,” according to Bendis, but he doesn’t respond to people asking if that’s because of concerns over copyrighted material being swiped.
Rich shows up himself later in the thread to defend himself, and – amazingly – everyone gets a lot more civil. Odd how that happens, isn’t it?
March 4th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Hilarious how the Millarworld folks are ragging on Gail Simone defending herself from Bendis taking a cheapshot at her.
The whole thing was blown out of proportion, but imo, the main culprit is Bendis. It was obvious that Morrison was joking, and it’s something Bendis should be used to, considering his cohorts at Marvel do it ALL THE TIME to DC. Joe Q, Loeb, Millar, JMS. And when someone from DC does it, joking or not, he overreacts and says that DC professionals take a class in that sort of behavior. Pot…meet kettle.
Of course…it was Gail Simone’s fault, right?
March 4th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
““Since I was actually involved in the thread on Jinxworld that got deleted, I thought I’d weigh in here, with a few notes. Bendis was mildly overreacting to a small minority of DC fans causing trouble bashing Secret Invasion. I for one, can’t understand what DC fans were doing on a Marvel writers board, but how and ever. Simone can’t take a joke. The same thing happened to me a while ago on Newsarama – I made a comment about some of her recent work and she blew a gasket and went crying to Matt Brady.””
This is the same genius that made the claim of Gail crying to Matt Brady in the deleted Bendis thread and was met by Gail with a resounding, “ummm…who are you?”.
Bendis overreacted slightly to the Morrison comment and then blew up like a volcano about Gail’s comments (where she spent the majority of them saying how much she was looking forward to SI and that Bendis had no need to be so defensive because everyone knows he is a talent).
Personally, I feel his decision to nuke the thread was a stupid act of cowardice. You should know in the age of the internet, there is no way to make it disappear.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Bendis can be a real two-faced little bitch sometimes.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I just find it easiest to blame Gail Simone for everything, including Global Warming.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
People love to give Rich a hard time, and it’s great for his column when they do. You’re all his sucker!
I actually really like Rich and can easily go on record as saying he has a ton more integrity than a good portion of the people in the industry. And if you guys out there knew how often the loudest complainers about Rich are messing with you, that they’ve been the ones to leak their own stories to stoke the fires, well…maybe you’d also stop falling for all of the manufactured “sell outs” of individual comics issues, too.
Ulp. Did I say too much?
March 4th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I think they were both joking to some degree. They were just in that odd situation which happens mainly on the internet, where nobody is quite sure how much the other person is joking. In the end, it’s no big deal. I doubt this is the end of any friendships.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Dunno, Jason…Bendis’ alluding to some secret that all in the industry know about Grant ans “his” event doesn’t seem like a joke…and his last gasket blow at the end doesn’t fit joking, either.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
“Hey, that’s my schtick”
No, now you get ragged on for not doing enough original reporting.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Is Bendis still upset that Bagley left to DC? Because he’s really getting pissy over minor things, even for the internet. I like the guy’s writing, but dude, come on.
I think Bendis and Morrison don’t care for each other, as there have been some shots done int he past before. I remember Morrison criticizing Ultimate Spider-Man when it first started by saying (and I’m paraphrasing) “It took Lee & Ditko less than an issue to create Spider-Man’s origin yet it takes 6 issues now before he’s even in costume.” So now they’re all passive aggressive and secretly in love with each other.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Bendis said his original posts were filled with “smileys” and he was just joking back to Grant.
Although if anyone knows about overreacting it’s Kevin, so I guess we should defer to him.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Yes, Joseph…that I do…and having read the thread before Bendis nuked it to hide his embarrassment, I, also, know the tone and tenor of what went on much better than you.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Jim, I thought that Graeme normally just got complaints from Dan Slott’s aliases calling him out on being mean to Brevoort?
March 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
You know Rich is just sitting over there giggling like a schoolgirl at all the fuss he’s causing. I blame him. Dramamonger that he seems to be. I’m sure we’ll see a link back to this post in next week’s column. Inbetween a Greg Land cover “swipe” and this week’s Byrne blowup.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Ah…Mysterious…if only we could all be anonymous so that it was hard to have our actions and ethics questioned.
Rich didn’t invent drama or create this drama in particular. He just reported it…and after Bendis too such efforts to make it disappear. Maybe he renegged on his deal with Mephisto?
March 4th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
The angrier Bendis gets,
the worse his writing gets.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Bendis said his original posts were filled with “smileys” and he was just joking back to Grant.
——————-
I saw Bendis’ original post. I don’t remember that many smilies. In fact, in his first post where he said the “el shutto” comment, I don’t remember any smilies at all.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Actually I think while Rich is probably bemused by the dust-up, odds are his mind is focused on more important things like the impending birth of his new baby.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Wait, wait, wait – I thought somebody murdered this Johnston guy with an electrified microphone, like, MONTHS ago.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:08 am
I still really have no idea what that whole thing was about or why I was dragged into it, but Bendis and I talked about it and everything’s fine. I like Brian just fine and everyone over-reacts once in a while.
It’s the internet! Smiley smiley smiley laugh out loud!
March 5th, 2008 at 1:10 am
And I still have no idea who that ‘crying to Matt Brady’ guy is or what he’s talking about.
Weird, what people obsess over.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:24 am
The site does not have an occasional pro-Marvel bias. FFS, it wasn’t that long ago I was being castigated for a pro DiDio/DC bias…
And all this attention has only served to increase LITG hits. What was that again aboyut not winning for losing? The other way round…
March 5th, 2008 at 7:07 am
“I look upon the face of my once pure artform, and weep.”
March 5th, 2008 at 7:09 am
comics aren’t the royal family.
I could care less about this stuff, I wanna know how darwyn cooke draws, I don’t care to read peoples reactions to him talking about frank miller.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Just hug it out people.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Seems like the pro-Marvel comment is referring to Millarworld, Rich.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Ah yes, possibly…
March 5th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Hey Graeme, you need to look at thread more. Some of us took many of those negative posters to task. The first post you quoted from is very much anti-Didio and it colors everything he writes