Monday, March 05, 2018

Comic Book Industry digs harder!

Two pieces of utter genius today. Emerald City Comic Con excludes white males from industry "mixer" parties, and a transgender comic artist wishes a guy was blown up by an IED in Assghanistan.

First, Emerald City Comic Con.

The comics industry seems to be doubling down on their policy of completely excluding anyone who is straight, white, male, or conservative. This year's Emerald City Comic Con released its schedule of events on its app recently. Anyone who is male, white and identifies as heterosexual found himself excluded from industry mixers and professional mixers.
A source attending the event who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons spoke to PJM about the blatant discrimination.

I'm not going to post all the tweets, because tedious. Cutting to the chase, there was an "industry LGBQTCIAFBIKGB mixer" party, and a "industry people of colour mixer" party listed. No other listings. So the wise guy "source attending the event who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons" asked the con where he could go, as a straight white cis male. Their response was interesting.

"Hi there. We do not have a specific industry mixer for your category this year."

Okay then.

Next, the reason why "source attending the event who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons" thought he might need to be a little concerned about his safety.

Comics creators really hate criticism. Every time "Diversity and Comics" creator Richard Meyer reviews a comic book he doesn't like, industry professionals lose their minds and wish violence on him. The last time it happened he was threatened by a Marvel professional and told to stay away from Comicon. This time, Image Comics transgender writer Michelle Perez tweeted that he wishes Meyer had died in an IED attack.

Again, it is presented as a tweet list. The money quote, as it were, is Perez: "hes a war veteran, so of course he's a cryptofacist. unfortunately, an IED didn't blow him up." [Punctuation and lack of capitalization preserved from the original.]

This of course stays up on twitter, while they are busy purging conservatives. (I don't mind that it stayed up, it is always nice when fruitcakes self-identify like this. I do mind that twitter is purging conservatives.)

Image Comics, which employs Perez, is utterly dismissive of the issue.

Bounding Into Comics reported that Erik Larson, Image Comics co-founder and board member, responded to the uproar."Larsen's initial reaction was to explain Perez's wish for Meyer to be killed is part of freedom of speech, "I can't control what other people say or do anymore than they can control what I say or do. It's just words, man. Nobody was hurt. That's the freedom of speech in action. None of us have to like it.""

There you have it, wishing death on a critic is perfectly cool, just free speech in action my friends. But don't show up to the wrong industry mixer, or you might get your ass kicked. YEAH!!!

That sound you are hearing is my eyes rolling at the thought of these pasty, pencil-necked dickweeds trying to kick somebody's ass. Like a kindergarten slap fight.

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