“We all love comics more than what is healthy, let’s not be jerks to each other.”

I think it’s the “MORE than what is healthy” part is what makes people act like jerks.

bri

Well said.

This blog entry SUCKS! The writing is terrible, and the art is worse!

Joking aside, the scariest part, to me, is how these commentators act when the mask of internet anonymity is gone.

Example: you go to a convention, where publishers, editors, writers and artists are taking time out of their weekends to talk to (and LISTEN TO) fans (I’d like to see heads of other media, like TV or Film try that), and these guys walk up and say something along the lines of “Yeah, how come Book X SUCKS so much?” and sit down like they’re the kings of the universe.

Harrumph.

“In a way, I think all comic creators deserve that kind of respect. In working with writers, pencilers, inkers, colorists, and letterers I’ve come to realize that they all work their butts off. ”

I agree to a large extent. However I’ve seen plenty of message boards frequented by comic creators where those comic creators go ballistic over musicians and filmmakers that they don’t like (and even modern comic creators or trends they don’t care for): “Michael Bay is horrible omg omg etc.” And fans on the net are just as hard on sports figures and movie stars they don’t like or who’ve done poorly recently. The thing is, I actually agree with some of those opinions, but the idea that comic creators should be exempt from it seems weird. My roommmate does some comic work and I’ve seen how hard he works – so I can testify that it’s true about their hours being crazy.

Agree with pretty much all the above quotes. The important thing is the celebration of the medium and its successes. There is enough of it to focus on.

Great article again, Filip, and I certainly agree with you, with one exception. I’m not crazy about the anonymity of the internet. Yeah, it’s a necessary evil, but I think more than anything it leads to the exacerbation of less-than-civil behavior in a lot of folks. It’s why I always use my real name, or at least identify myself, in any posts I make. I want to be held responsible for any boneheaded stuff that I may say (and sometimes I just want to be held…sigh…).

Of course, even that wouldn’t totally solve the problem, as I’ve seen people being considerable jerks in person at conventions, too (and sadly, I’ve seen a small number of people who work in the industry being dilrods, as well).

One of the things I love about comicdom, though, is that on the whole it has a much greater ratio of kind, decent folks than I’ve found in any other subculture of which I’m a part (you know, tinfoil collectors, polka enthusiasts, nun-spankers, you name it).

I just hope everyone remembers your words when my next comic comes out…

I’ve been thinking about this article for awhile now. Of course I agree that a bit more thought, a dash of respect before hitting the send button could help alleviate some of the flame wars that crop up from time to time.

However, I have to say I’m struggling with the idea that those in the industry deserve some special level of respect. I understand that creators work harder than our myths suggest and that each book in my pull file represents a collective effort by many people. But by the same token, those creators are compensated for their time, sometimes handsomely, to do work that they presumably love. Why should they be offered greater consideration than a poster who puts down $20 to $50 a week of hard-earned money keeping those people employed? Yet you rarely hear that from creators these days with few exceptions (Johns and Bendis leap to mind).

Let’s take the Miller example. I’m sure some in the industry cheered at Mr. David’s slapdown. But what if the poster’s experience with Mr. Miller’s work is limited to an expletive-ridden Batman who locks young boys in cages to fight with rats? Is this person under any obligation to be “grateful” to Mr. Miller’s contributions, particularly as the most significant of which probably occurred around the time the poster was born? Even more troubling is the message sent when a professional of long standing engages in what is, to my thinking, mean-spirited character assassination. Isn’t Mr. David’s post an example of exactly the kind of posts that you spend the remainder of the article telling us you DON’T want to see?

Look, I understand the love/hate relationship the industry has with sites like this one. The internet is an excellent (read: cheap) way to spread information on their products and hopefully generate some word of mouth business. Yet no one likes hearing criticism of the decisions they have made or the artistic value of their work. And so it is not surprising when the attitude expressed in the title of this article, that everything should be supportive or you are ungracious, crops up.

But as you correctly pointed out, from the very first BBS message boards the conversations have been pointed and confrontational at times. We are not coming into your place of work, you are poking your head into our clubhouses. Perhaps we could agree that everyone needs to raise their game and not place any particular category of our community into a special class.

>>Keep this in mind: for every person who comments about how horrible a story is or what the creators are doing to ruin their comics now, there are probably at least two people shaking their heads at them and their overly negative comments.<<

I agree – and unfortunately know from experience that if you point that out, you run the risk of people dismissing that idea because *what if* people read the article, watched the video, etc, and didn’t like it, but just didn’t feel like commenting that they didn’t? With a lot of folks who are just so negative about everything, you cannot win. They are going to be negative, it’s what they do, and, I suspect, a large part of who they are, and they should be avoided, rather than engaged.

And further – the people who are chronically negative are funny and sad. There are two ones right now peppering the board with their keen insight of how everything – *everything* is bad. You can find them easily enough, and clicking on their name shows their posts. With these guys it’s just amazing – there’s not one thing they like that they post about. For the 30 or so posts you can dig through, every last one of them is negative about the subject of the story, the creator, another poster, the site, the article…something.

It just makes you shake your head and wonder what’s missing in their lives that they’ve filed it with this all-encompassing negativity and need to be critical. Also makes you feel sorry for real people in their lives, as I’m quite sure those feelings and probably comments don’t end with typing them out on the internet.

You cannot dismiss out of hand the rantings and ravings of madmen altogehter. You enjoy working in a medium that has the luxury of instant feedback once a product is released. This should go into decision making and push the artists, writers, editors etc. into publishing better products. Are some of the things said crazy, mean, hurtful? Yes. However, without the feedback where does that leave the industry in terms of direction and marketing? I know it’s “art” but really at the end of the day it’s entertainment and product. You ignore the vocal minority at your own peril. Why? Because that minority may actually represent a larger percentage of the consumers than you would expect. You are semi-in-the-public eye. You are part of an industry that has hardcore fans and creators are easy targets. Comes with the territory. Your comments are appreciated but consider that the starbucks guy just poured your coffee into a cup for $8 an hour. There were a lot of people who worked many hard slaving hours to get that coffee to your cup. Don’t be a jerk to that guy either. He doesn’t get paid nearly enough for your guff. Politely ask him for another please as this one is not up to standard. Tell him thank you. Maybe when he goes home that night to post on a message board about the comics he picked up this week he won’t be such a jerk because someone was decent to them about something that day.

@Brian: Cyblade #3 in stores this Wednesday:)

@Jamee: Nope, folks outside of the entertainment industry deserve the same respect. That being said, I think you burn some respect points when you aren’t willing to post behind your real name (there by taking ownership of your statement) and your comment isn’t well thought out or rude. Rude comments tend to lead to folks dismissing the poster. Post a thoughtful comment (like you did) and I’m confident you’ll get plenty of respect.

@SeanMurphy: Plenty of creators are regularly online interacting with fans. Just from Top Cow – Ron Marz, Stjepan Sejic, Phil Hester, Troy Hickman spring to mind. My experience is that most creators are incredibly polite and welcoming to their fans, often times in the face of rude comments.
The title is meant to be more of an attention grabber (the internet loves those), but the bottom line is not that professionals don’t like criticism; but that mean-spirited or rude comments are really helpful in anyway.

@Dan & MattBrady: One of my favorite Jon Stewart stand up bits is where he essentially says, “Of course our country is run by radicals on the left and right. The moderates will never run the country, because we’re too damn moderate to get riled up about it.” It’s stands to reason in any given situation that you are only going to hear from the people who are really happy or really pissed off. The people who just enjoyed it are likely content to sit back at home and read their next comic. Or they’re afraid that InoWearUliv379 might actually know where they live…

Take care,

Filip Sablik
Publisher, Top Cow Productions
Read two free issues of The Darkness at http://www.topcow.com/darkness

If fans are dicks, are the comic creators pussies? No, they can be dicks as well. To quote George Will, their response to legitimate questions is to act “like a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen”

They respond to a majority of questions in a flippant and dismissive tone, choosing to pick those absolutely pointless questions about a new D-List series to respond to with the usual “We have big plans in store for _______.” Instead of fixing the constant scheduling problems, they try to say that creator X’s art is worth it, while someone like Mark Bagley (who has more Ultimate Spider-Man trades out filled with his art than Quitley drawn New X-Men issues), continues providing a constant stream of revenue to the company getting no respect.

Bill Rosemann, Kurt Busiek, and Fabian Niceiza; these three are the best at responding to reader questions and concerns without bringing their ego to the table or talking down to the reader.

“Wow. How sad for Peter David that he honestly think most people would ever want to achieve anything close to what Frank Miller has.

Here’s a tip, PD: In my medical practice, I achieve more per minute in contributing to society than Frank Miller ever hopes to. I am not jealous of the man, I am not speaking from a place of pettiness – I am speaking from a place of common sense. The kind that says all of Frank Miller’s “contribution” to the genre has amounted to a pile of dog shit, and he deserves no respect for nearly single-handedly destroying everything good about comics.”

I think you might be missing the point of the article.

I’ve never understood some ‘fans’ negativity towards titles. If you don’t like them, don’t buy them. At the end of the day, sales are what matters to publishers, not what people on message boards think.
feedback is great when it is constructive and I’m sure some writers/artists take comments on board but ‘this art is crap’ is just disrespectful and rude.

While I agree with some of what you have to say, I have to disagree with many of the arguments you use to support your position, in particular the Heidi MacDonald quote is problematic to me, it’s the kind of argument that I’ve heard quite a lot recently and seems to suggest that unless you are frank miller or some sort of fabulous creator/writer/artist of equal standing and accomplishment that you don’t have the right to express your opinion regarding a comic/film/whatever unless it’s overwhelmingly positive.
I may not be frank miller but I know what I like and what I don’t like and if I feel the need to express my opinion then I’ll do exactly that, if you feel the need to call me a jerk well that’s entirely up to you, but it’s always seemed deeply ironic to me that a group of individuals such as yourselves who often rely on a little thing called the freedom of speech are so dead against anybody else having that right, unless they agree with you (Yep, I read the bit about the critique and you should be aware that your colleagues response to a respectful and constructive critique is to point out just how well that particular issue sold and then go to great lengths to explain how little they care even if you have followed the title religiously for ten years).

As for – “unspeakably petty and ungrateful and ungracious” well I think that description could easily describe many of the so-called professionals that infest your particular industry, I only ever went to one comic convention in my life but it was enough – if you feel that the online community is mean and ornery then I’d like to suggest that perhaps it’s because in real life your colleagues are even worse, and that in posting something that seems downright rude, all they’re doing is copying their favorite artist or writer and being a complete asshole.

In closing I’d like to point out that while the hours may seem ungodly and the money you make, hardly worth it, that in fact you’re not the only professional awake at 3am on Saturday morning – some of us are still working away, making sure there’s a suitable amount of rat poison in some yuppie’s Grande low fat, no sugar, two pump cinnamon dolce latte – just kidding.

Filip, thank you for the response. I’ve been very happy with this series, I love the character, and any Rick Mays work is great to see.

Cheers,

B

@spitar: Heh. The Starbucks comment was meant to be a funny punchline. Don’t worry, I don’t actually berate my barista. I love everyone at Starbucks:)

@TysonHinton: Your comment raised another good point – if you have aspirations of being a professional creator, don’t go around bashing other creators or professionals. You never know when it will come back to bite ya! Thanks for the feedback, Tyson!

@KenB: Yep, creators talking down to fans is pretty jerky behavior as well. I hold folks up to the same standard.

@WITA: And we appreciate it!

@RussHagen: Bingo!

@ElBarista: Wow, sounds like you had a bad con experience. Sorry to hear that. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure there are creators who have been jerky to fans. Most of the professionals I’ve interacted with are just that – professional. But that’s my experience as far back as when I was a fan. I can’t tell you how many creators made me a lifelong fan just by being courteous and friendly at a convention (lesson to the creators out there).

@DieterNagy: Agreed, sir. And are you trying to set me up to tell you about how we’re focusing on consistent creative teams (Marz/Sejic on Witchblade and Hester/Broussard/Lucas on The Darkness), pushing for less decompressed story-telling, adding letters pages and backmatter, maintaining a $2.99 price point, and doing free comic giveaways with “Let Us Win YOU Over”? No? Oh, well then this is awkward…

Take care,

Filip Sablik
Publisher, Top Cow Productions
Read two free issues of The Darkness at http://www.topcow.com/darkness

“A lot of the times fans get responded to in a dismissive manner, its because they pop up with this weird entitlement thing (which is where you get option C from). Otherwise…I’ve been in a lot of “Ask *insert creator here*” threads, and I just don’t see what you’re talking about.”

-Brevoort for a long time was just rude and dismissive, especially during the Civil War scheduling screw-up (mainly because he kept saying things that contradicted what he wrote earlier, such as that magic schedule that only he knew about).

-There was that time Didio made a girl cry at a convention, due to just embarrassing her in front of a crowd.

-Morrison’s Final Crisis exit interviews.

-Quesada at the NYCC tries to belittle a valid question about event comics by saying they need them otherwise heroes do nothing in their own books (or something similar).

-Any question asked about scheduling, I can just see the creators rolling their eyes as I read the about the panel going “What do you expect us to do, actually solicit work when we know it will ship without delay? Don’t be a fool you idiot, we’re comic book creators.” Even after the nth time Ed McGuiness or Steve McNiven delays a book.

It’s not even just that, it’s stupid things like Marvel pulling quotes from reviews about books to hype up the book, when in reality the review was a bad one (War Machine and Black Panther, for example). Not only is it stupid but it shows a lack of respect for their readers.

There’s this sense that because the comics industry is so incestuous and the same people do the same thing, just walking across the street every 3 years or so, that because they’re always around like-minded people who would never ask one another some tough questions about scheduling or plot holes in a story, that when they do get a fair question, asking something that (for us) is unknown, the creator scoffs at it or takes offense to something beyond the usual “OMG Thanx for teh Joe Kellyz on Amazing Spider-Manz”, knowing that his fellow creators at the panel or floor will defend him (or….her?)

I think this entire blog/comments should be viewed by everyone as an example on how to have an intellectual comic issue debate w/o digressing into infantile namecalling. I will say that as a ‘hater’, I try to back up my negativity towards some of the books I collect with intelligent feedback to fellow fans and their creators.

Books, like much of entertainment, do go through down cycles in most people’s eyes. Unfortunately the more juvenile ‘hardcore’ fans tend not to respond with constructive criticism but like ‘marks’ who are told Pro Wrestling is fake or there’s no Santa. And honestly don’t we all have a common goal of just wanting to read and support great books?

Hell yeah, you tell’em Filip! Some of these people have just been outright abusive just for the sake of it. I’m glad that you and other people in the industry have spoken up against these fanpeople who critique more openly than is necessary.

They see Grant Morrison or Rob Liefeld do an interview and all of sudden they feel they can talk trash because they can hide behind an internet secret identity. Which leads me to believe that comic book comment posters are a “superstitious and cowardly lot.”

Filip, thank you for Cyblade #3. Please pass along my thanks to the creative and publishing staff involved in the production of this book. I’m looking forward to issue #4… and #5, and #6, etc. I’m curious though, was Rick Mays not supposed ot due the interiors on the entire series? Not complaing, Flaikov’s work is good, just thought Mr. Mays might be doing more than covers.

Anyway, thanks again. I eagerly await the next issue.

Cheers,

B

Ferguson, I’m an airhead tonight.

B