How Incompetence Injures Comics Trub

One of my frustrations with the response to Brian Wood’s newsletter is that when I first heard about it, it was through this tweet:

And then what followed was a whole twitter whispering publicly about how awful this newsletter only a select few could see was. And then finally someone posted it, so I go to it, expecting it to be exactly what the above tweet described. I’m expecting like a full on Frank Miller rant. I’m expecting crazy town fireworks. I have my pitchfork in hand, and I’m ready to burn this mother to the ground. I mean with Brian Wood, we have someone who we know beyond a shadow of a doubt what he did because he admitted it. So I was like, oh shit, back off the wagon—here. we. go.



And what I find instead is a fairly reasoned critique of the mob culture of twitter which largely seeks to fan its own flames of outrage to an undefined end, without perspective, largely for its own weekly entertainment. And then he closed the newsletter by saying that this kind of mob behavior could result in someone killing themselves–which as we have seen in the past IS a possibility of this level of social ostracization, particularly if you are dealing with people who are already struggling with issues. And that’s true whether you are talking about someone who is a “good” person or a “bad” person. But so this rather innocuous line turns into Wood is castigating women for speaking out about abusive women. And this idea that Wood’s newsletter was this thing–this “severe reprimand or rebuke” of women for speaking out against abuse, was perpetuated by more people than just Sneddon. In fact, it was only because the level of righteousness reached a high enough point, that the newsletter ended up being publicly(bravely) shared.



Here’s my issue with that, to people who want to buy into your premise of what this newsletter is, or just want another log on the fire for how they (justifiably) feel about Wood–this is all normal and fine. But for people outside of that ring, stuff like this makes you question the people who told you the crazy stuff in the first place. I’m like…wait, can I trust these people’s judgement, if they’re this willing to manipulate these things to fit their mission statement premise?



I saw this as well with the Nathan Edmondson “reporting” earlier this week. Reporting that talks about “two-year investigations” and has as its premise Edmondson as a “predator”. But here’s the thing, how he is a predator is never defined. It’s just said over and over that he is. The only actual information that we have been publicly given this week on Edmondson is that he once worked for a conservative think tank, and that he was arrested as a 19 year old for credit card fraud. Here is the problem with THAT. Again, this is all fine and great for people who already agree with your premise that Edmondson is a creep–or who are just willing to believe without any kind of evidence that he is some kind of predator. But when the only real thing that you point to is his political leanings, then what you have done is take very serious issues of harassment, ethics, and bigotry–and strained it through the bi-polar political prism of the culture. So now, what it looks like, to people who have no other information, is that Edmondson is being attacked because he has unpopular(within comics) political beliefs. Which Wood in his Newsletter mentions.



And that’s so destructive. That choice really harms anyone that actually did want to come forward about Edmondson because now anything people say about him, people can just say it’s because he’s a republican.



And the reason that Nick and others did it, is because they equate differing political ideas as personal failings–which makes sense in your own fish bubble. Like other people who share your beliefs will follow you down that rabbit hole. But people outside of that, don’t operate along those lines. I know plenty of people who aren’t “predators” but who hold repugnant political or religious views.



And this gets at my issue, and why I wrote this. It is incredibly frustrating to me, as someone who has heard the horrible stories about both of these men, publicly, and privately, to see the reporting on both be so sloppy, so fucking hacky, that it undermines the entire idea that these guys have done anything wrong. And it’s because the people who are pushing this stuff publicly, exist within an online echo chamber where it’s “we gotta push this out the door NOW, because it’s so important!”–but when it’s this sloppy, all it is to me is web clicks. This is trafficking in the popularity of the “outrage of the week” culture in comics that props up at least 75 percent of the talk about comics online(god forbid we all ever talk about an actual comic). To me, if you really cared about these issues, you would bother to have the professionalism to do the job right. The phrase “you come at the king, you best not miss” is so so important on these issues. By not dotting your i’s, or crossing your t’s–all you’ve done is sew seeds of doubt. It is irresponsible.



And what drives me crazy is that in a week it will all be forgotten as we go onto the next thing. You know why there have been no repercussions for Wood’s admitted sexual harassment? Because people in power don’t take you seriously. And why should they?



And I mean all of these things are given the same weight. There’s no difference in what happens with these thinkpieces and outrage no matter what happens, the outrage is the same volume. People launched just as many ships over Milo Manara drawing Spider-woman’s butt as they did Brian Wood’s sexual harassment. Same people. Same ships. And you weirdos don’t even know what you want. So we have Brian Wood admit what he did. Now what? Should he be banned from comics? For life? Should he be fined? Just publicly shamed?? For how long? When Chris Sims stuff came out, what we heard from ComicsAlliance is that “people change”–which I agree with! They do! Reform is possible. But how do we as complete strangers measure change? How do we as pitchforked mob forgive? Can we forgive? What does forgiveness mean in that context? Is forgiveness ours to give? Do we want a world where one public misstep and its forever? Or do we want to have discussions about when people fuck up and everyone can kind of try and grow from the situation? Because right now, it just reads like sludge circling the drain. We can do better. We SHOULD do better.



-Sarah

