You can’t swing a dead cat around the comicsphere these days without hitting a post dedicated to either writer Tony Isabella’s fight with his former employers, DC Comics, over his character Black Lightning, or bloggers Alan David Doane & John Pierce’s issue-taking with the methods and motives of columnist-retailer-“activist” James Sime, aka The Comics Pimp. Would it surprise you if I said I felt that in both cases, all the sides are wrong? (To some degree, at least.)
First, let’s take the case of Isabella v. DC. Tony argues (here and here) that a recent plotline in Green Arrow (written by Judd Winick) in which the Black Lightning character murders a man in cold blood (albeit because the man himself committed a serious crime) a) runs contrary to how Black Lightning would “really” act; b) is part of a long-running pattern of DC abusing Tony and his creation particularly and c) black superheroes generally. I don’t think that DC has responded, but Winick has offered something of an apology (along the lines of “I was sorry to hear Tony was upset”), along with assurance that this plotline was his idea and not part of any larger anti-BL or anti-TI conspiracy on the part of DC editorial.
Here’s the problem: Having seen Winick speak in person, and being familiar with his persona and politics generally, he seems to be one of the last people on whom DC could count to keep the black man down, as it were. Winick’s as liberal as they come, and the time I did see him speak (at San Diego Comic Con 2001, I believe), he passionately defended the decision of Warner Bros. to include the black Green Lantern, John Stewart, in the then-upcoming Justice League cartoon–regardless of their real motives, Winick argued, it’s important that African-Americans be represented in the TV incarnation of the World’s Greatest Superheroes. I don’t see him thinking to himself “Gee, black guys murder people all the time–why not have Black Lightning do something like that?” It just doesn’t wash. Nor do I see him “deliberately” targeting a Tony Isabella creation for any reason. Tony seems to think that because he emailed Winick several months ago regarding his objection to the proposed storyline, Winick’s refusal to amend the storyline is a purposeful slap in the face. I think Tony needs to realize that there’s a difference between going out of one’s way to irritate or offend someone and simply refusing to buckle if someone happens to be irritated or offended by what one is doing–particularly if one doesn’t believe one’s really doing anything wrong (or even just mistaken or dopey).
The larger problem with Tony’s arguments, though, is the abuse he’s been directing toward people who take issue with them. It appears that in Tony’s view, no one who disagrees with him has a heart, much less a clue–they’re all ignorant, or maliciously impugning his character, or both. To a certain degree, this line is to be expected from the somewhat irascible Isabella; politically, for example, he’s a rabidly liberal attack dog who slings epithets at the “Wrong Wing” and the “Repugs” that’d make Michael Moore blush. In other words, he’s not really in the business of admitting that the other side may be arguing in good faith. But that’s an explanation, not an excuse, and this attitude will get him nowhere except with people who are predisposed to agree with his side of the story to begin with. If he really wants to successfully make his case, it simply won’t do to get furious at people for not immediately agreeing to, say, the notion that a major corporation is pursuing a vendetta against this one guy who created a relatively obscure superhero a couple decades ago. Regardless of whether or not it’s actually true, it is hard to believe at first glance, and “first glance” is exactly what most people are are now getting regarding this situation.
So when blogger Kevin Melrose questions whether Tony’s feud with DC isn’t really an Old Guard-New Guard thing, he’s not “impugning” anything, particularly not Tony’s “character”; he is questioning Tony’s motives, and how that’s “not deserving of a response” in an argument such as this is beyond me. Moreover, as Graeme McMillan points out, in his effort to take on DC’s entire race-relations legacy, Tony’s been making some unfair and misleading statements regarding the treatment of black characters versus the treatment of superheroes in general. If DC’s malfeasance is as clear-cut as Tony says it is, it seems like he wouldn’t have to resort to points like John Stewart’s dithering leading to the destruction of a planet, particularly when the primary, white Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, went nuts and wiped out solar systems and such.
All that being said, Tony’s got a lot on his side. The vagaries of the contracutal dealings between comics companies and comics creators at the time when Tony created Black Lightning leave him with a substantial stake–at the very least personal, and quite arguably legal and financial–in the future of that character. Historically he’s been a lot more involved in what goes on with Black Lightning than most people would expect. Additonally, there does appear to be a history of bad blood between DC and Isabella, and regardless of who happens to be in the right, it’s certainly conceivable that this grudge may come into play when Isabella or his creations come up in the course of plotting a book. And the lack of African-American superheroes of import or staying power is indeed an egregious one. Sending one of the few into the moral gray zone by turning him into an ersatz Punisher type makes building on this character’s legacy genuinely problematic. Finally, the big comics companies do not exactly have an untrammelled history of supporting the rights of the creators who’ve worked for them, and I see very little reason to automatically assume this came to an end with Siegel & Shuster getting credit for Superman and Jack Kirby getting some of his pages back from Marvel. In other words, we shouldn’t just write Tony off as a grumpy old crank who’s upset that “they” are ruining his baby, even if, unfortunately, that’s how he’s coming across.
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Tussle Number Two involves James Sime, owner of the comic shop Isotope and writer of the column “The Comics Pimp.” Sime’s column details the methods he employs to drum up comics sales at his store and raise comics awareness in general. It has a tendency to employ drug, military, and (obviously) soliticitation metaphors, to swear, and to get very excited about the introduction of new ideas into the debate as to how to “save” comics. Bloggers Alan David Doane and John Pierce object, arguing that Sime’s showy tactics and overheated rhetoric likely do more harm than good, that his methods are unproven and unsound, and that the whole enterprise is silly and self-congratulatory. (The meat of the “debate,” if it can be called that in its current state, can be found here, at the Brian Wood Forum.)
I’ll say this in Sime’s defense–as over-the-top and obnoxious as the presentation may be, some of his ideas are, in fact, good ones. The one that gets bandied about the most–selling comics in airports, or as Sime might put it, SELLING COMICS IN FUCKING AIRPORTS!–is actually a great idea, though likely financially and possibly logistically impossible, given the stranglehold national chain retailers of all kinds seem to have on airport concessions; simply put, there is no national comic-book chain, and therefore I don’t see any comic shops finding their way in there next to airport Bennigans’ and airport W.H. Smiths and airport McDonalds’. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried, and apparently that’s what Sime is doing. Moreover, it gets people thinking about the need for comics retailers and publishers to reconsider their venues, putting comics where people actually shop. It’s part and parcel of SLG selling their goth comics in Hot Topic stores, or the graphic novel sections found in Virgin and Tower Records, and so on. If it can be done–granted, that’s a big “if”–it would be fantastic for the business. UPDATE: forgot to mention this initially, but Alan isn’t exactly known for calm, non-antagonistic discussion, and his own bravado played a part in the donnybrook that this discussion quickly became.
On the other hand, I don’t think I even need to say how tedious the “guerilla marketing” and “pimpin’ ain’t easy” and “street teams attack public transportation” rhetoric is. God only knows how intelligent comics fans have come to see such bravado as the future of the medium–as though the ability to compete on the pop-cultural landscape is predicated on the degree to which one acts like a nightmare amalgamation of Eminem and a Battle-of-Seattle Black-Blocker. To a certain extent we can blame Warren Ellis, who virtually invented overheated-prose comics “activism” in his forum and its offshoots; perhaps we can also point the finger at Grant Morrison, who despite not really doing much activism on his own introduced the whole rockstar/radical/media-terrorist concept into comics in his series The Invisibles.
Here’s the thing about that, though: the rockstar concept is an important route for the growth of comics, through prominent, intelligent, presentable, cool-looking comics creators. (Indeed, you can bet your sweet bippy that’s the route I’ll be taking on the road to funnybook domination.) However, it’s important to keep rock-star brio and the attendant high profile of its possessors tethered to actual talent, which Morrison and Ellis (and Paul Pope and Alan Moore and so forth) have a great deal of. Stripped of talent, rockstar spectacle in comics can lead to the same empty, stupid crap that constitutes most other pop media–a world where Madonna can be mentioned in the same breath as Prince without people laughing in derision. (Seriously, when has Madonna recorded a single song as good as “Purple Rain,” much less an entire album as good as Purple Rain? But since both stars enganged in high spectacle, and Madonna has been more successful at this than Prince in the long run, we have to endure column inch after column inch about Madge’s flirtations with kabbalah and politics and motherhood and blah, blah, blah, as if she’s actually an artist.)
The point is that most of Sime’s ideas are unproven at best and (as in the case of leaving comics lying around on public transportation) transparently cost-ineffective and self-aggrandizing at worst. The idea that we should all clap our hands for him because he’s “doing something for comics” or “trying something different” is just silly–in the words of The Muppets Take Manhattan, if you want to try something different, “put some Jell-O down your pants.” We have to apply the same success-based, rational standards to comics activism that we would to any other (less flashy, or less worthy) endeavor. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that “guerilla activism” of the Comics Pimp style comes up short just as do similar facets of boosterish activism–“Team Comix,” “The New Mainstream,” the Marvel method of Press Attention At Any Price, etc.
And it really should go without saying that the ad hominems leveled against Sime detractors by his supporters–in some cases, by high-profile professionals like AiT/PlanetLar founder Larry Young, Newsarama head Matt Brady, and comics creator Brian Wood, all of whom should know better–are stupid beyond words. Ridiculing blogs as narcissitic peanut-gallery ranting, getting into “what have you done for comics lately?” pissing matches, and generally speaking in the same “ROCKS!!!/SUCKS!!!” Beavis-and-Buttheadisms that so grate in Sime’s original columns do nothing to shore up the notion that the Comics Pimp brand of activism is the wave of the future for intelligent comics and their fans.