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Ritual Disclaimer and Reminder of Love:
I love comics. I love making comics. Writing, drawing, awesome. A lot of people in comics, making and reading, are awesome.
The business still sucks.
I was at my doctor's today, explaining comics. I took in Rumble Girls: SWT and was explaining how the plot turned on a company deciding the best thing for their star female character was a nice, bracing rape and how it reflected general comics culture. She said, "But that doesn't sell in comics, right?"
"It sold. There was a whole comic series that turned on the rape of a lovable character." (By which, yes, I mean Identity Crisis.)
"But not keep on selling?"
"It was a bestseller, and the rape (in Identity Crisis) was by editorial mandate."
I never got to how when I wrote that in SWT, I was writing about comics from the early-ish 1980's-to-mid 90's. I had no idea rapey rape McRapesalot would become such a selling point. I thought I was being satirical, and that SWT would be a story of its time.
Bzzzzzt.
I was not only wrong, I misunderestimated how gross real people are for a buck, and that's leaving out meth addicts and heiresses.
I have written out and deleted without posting, posts and letters to Journalista, ComicBookResources, The Beat, The Comics Reporter, regarding T1ghtl1p and it's unpaid freelancers, Plat1num and their scheme to pwn book charts with C0wb0ys and Al1ens, and the canonization of epic fuckups who got their just desserts.
Why?
I'm Too Old For This Shit.
When someone says they love comics, they do, and they'll keep making them, somehow, no matter what happens. Whan someone says, "I want to work in comics IN THE WORST WAY!" RUN THE OTHER WAY, because they WILL succeed. They WILL work in comics in the worst way, and they'll take you with them, people who were warned, who then whined that they were just trying to build a career.
I'm Too Old For Your Shit.
P.T. Barnum, if he'd been speaking about comics, would've been wrong about the sucker rate. It's not by the minute, it's by the second, and the new suckers watch the old suckers coming out of other end of the woodchipper and still stick their hand in.
It'd be nice if the Internet Age has helped in some way to save suckers from themselves, but it hasn't. Not even with Google Cache to dredge up things buried in the quicklime pit in the backyard.
The suckers just smile and swallow, then jump in the woodchipper. Which makes me more and more like Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, "No. Stop. Don't."
Y'all have fun with that.
I'm Too Old For That Shit.
As I wrote to someone fairly new to comics just this week,
"Never EVER feel guilty about working in comics. The people who should
feel guilty are rip off artists, people who eff over others to further
their own careers, various liars and operators, and people who abuse
other people.
If you're not doing those things, don't feel bad.
And you don't get to feel guilty because I don't like the business.
That's my problem, and you can't have it.
This is the last time I will write about this to you. Not because I'm
upset, but because I get upset. I want to keep that happiness I knew
after the fire, where I had my focus corrected to what was good about
comics pros and fans. I am DETERMINED to keep it, and the only way is
to ignore all the shit that makes me unhappy. I can't change it, all I
can change is myself. What you and everyone else did for me means
nothing if I go back down that bad road."
And I mean it.
Because, say it with me, "For That, Shit, I'm Old Too."
But I'll never be too old to draw and write and make.
Win.
I love comics. I love making comics. Writing, drawing, awesome. A lot of people in comics, making and reading, are awesome.
The business still sucks.
I was at my doctor's today, explaining comics. I took in Rumble Girls: SWT and was explaining how the plot turned on a company deciding the best thing for their star female character was a nice, bracing rape and how it reflected general comics culture. She said, "But that doesn't sell in comics, right?"
"It sold. There was a whole comic series that turned on the rape of a lovable character." (By which, yes, I mean Identity Crisis.)
"But not keep on selling?"
"It was a bestseller, and the rape (in Identity Crisis) was by editorial mandate."
I never got to how when I wrote that in SWT, I was writing about comics from the early-ish 1980's-to-mid 90's. I had no idea rapey rape McRapesalot would become such a selling point. I thought I was being satirical, and that SWT would be a story of its time.
Bzzzzzt.
I was not only wrong, I misunderestimated how gross real people are for a buck, and that's leaving out meth addicts and heiresses.
I have written out and deleted without posting, posts and letters to Journalista, ComicBookResources, The Beat, The Comics Reporter, regarding T1ghtl1p and it's unpaid freelancers, Plat1num and their scheme to pwn book charts with C0wb0ys and Al1ens, and the canonization of epic fuckups who got their just desserts.
Why?
I'm Too Old For This Shit.
When someone says they love comics, they do, and they'll keep making them, somehow, no matter what happens. Whan someone says, "I want to work in comics IN THE WORST WAY!" RUN THE OTHER WAY, because they WILL succeed. They WILL work in comics in the worst way, and they'll take you with them, people who were warned, who then whined that they were just trying to build a career.
I'm Too Old For Your Shit.
P.T. Barnum, if he'd been speaking about comics, would've been wrong about the sucker rate. It's not by the minute, it's by the second, and the new suckers watch the old suckers coming out of other end of the woodchipper and still stick their hand in.
It'd be nice if the Internet Age has helped in some way to save suckers from themselves, but it hasn't. Not even with Google Cache to dredge up things buried in the quicklime pit in the backyard.
The suckers just smile and swallow, then jump in the woodchipper. Which makes me more and more like Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, "No. Stop. Don't."
Y'all have fun with that.
I'm Too Old For That Shit.
As I wrote to someone fairly new to comics just this week,
"Never EVER feel guilty about working in comics. The people who should
feel guilty are rip off artists, people who eff over others to further
their own careers, various liars and operators, and people who abuse
other people.
If you're not doing those things, don't feel bad.
And you don't get to feel guilty because I don't like the business.
That's my problem, and you can't have it.
This is the last time I will write about this to you. Not because I'm
upset, but because I get upset. I want to keep that happiness I knew
after the fire, where I had my focus corrected to what was good about
comics pros and fans. I am DETERMINED to keep it, and the only way is
to ignore all the shit that makes me unhappy. I can't change it, all I
can change is myself. What you and everyone else did for me means
nothing if I go back down that bad road."
And I mean it.
Because, say it with me, "For That, Shit, I'm Old Too."
But I'll never be too old to draw and write and make.
Win.
