Why do I keep having to learn the same lessons over and over?

Those who follow my blog know that in recent weeks I posted some hot-headed remarks regarding my perception of how DC Comics treats creators. While I stand by at least one of my basic points – I think DC’s policy concerning “derivative” characters is self-defeating – I need to walk back pretty much everything else, especially my characterization of the motives of the men involved in developing, explaining and implementing DC’s creators equity program.

I need to apologize to Geoff Johns, Dan DiDio, Jim Lee, and Larry Ganem.

I’ve been an ass.

I won’t repeat the particulars because it would be a disservice to these well-meaning men to potentially re-ignite any hostility I may have inspired by my overheated blogging and emailing. Let’s just say I ascribed motives to people that were 180 degrees opposite to their actual intentions. Geoff, Dan, Jim, and Larry sincerely want to do the right thing by creators. I didn’t give them the proper credit for that; I interpreted a disagreement about process as evidence of malign intent. In so doing, I hurt people who didn’t deserve it, and offended people who were trying to help me.

I’m truly, truly sorry.

How did this happen? How could I be so wrong-headed?

I won’t try to excuse my behavior, but I do have an explanation I think might be useful to other people who find themselves in a similar situation– reacting to events in the present based on unresolved (or even unconscious) memories of events from the past.

To explain by way of a neutral, personal story:

For most of my adult life, until about ten years ago, I carried a grudge against my best friend from high school. (Yes, apparently I am that immature). We had what I believed to be an inexplicable falling-out a week before our senior prom, leaving me to scramble at the last minute to arrange alternate plans for my date and me. I never understood why my friend did what he did, and I carried a resentment over it for more than thirty years. Until, thanks to Facebook, we became reacquainted in the early 2000s, and finally met for dinner to talk over old times.

Which is when I learned the reason he cancelled our plans for prom night: he was angry with me for something I did a month before our final blow-up. Something that in my own sense of injury I completely discounted. Something I’d forgotten in the intervening years while I continued to carry my grudge. When he reminded me of what I’d done I felt ashamed and mortified. Not only had he been angry, he was well justified in his anger. He didn’t owe me an apology; I owed him an apology. (I hope I don’t need to say I immediately apologized, abjectly and profusely.)

This encounter with an old friend forced me to reconsider memories that I’d accepted as objective truth. It piqued my continuing interest in exploring why I believe what I believe, why some things I believe are true are in fact not true at all, and why I continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

(The marginally good news for my self-respect? Through my reading I’ve learned I’m not alone in this kind of self-justifying, unreliable memory; we all do it. Most of us credit ourselves for having more ethical motives than we actually possess; we blame others for more evil intent than they possess; and we remember events to our own advantage, putting ourselves in the right and others in the wrong. Knowing this is true, and that I’m not the only self-justifying jerk in the world, is a weak comfort.)

What does this have to do with my very public outrage over DC’s creator equity policies? Directly, of course: not much. Indirectly, of course: everything.

I didn’t leave DC on good terms in the mid-80s. At the time, as you might now guess, I blamed DC for that (and still feel the people involved might have handled things better). But as time has passed, and particularly after my humiliating encounter with my old high school friend, I’ve reconsidered my interpretation of that leaving, and I’ve accepted my own considerable contribution to the collapse of my business relationship with the company.

Unfortunately, my head doesn’t always communicate with my heart. And because I left the comic book business just a few year after I left DC, and spent the following twenty-five years doing other things, when I returned to the field it was as an emotional Rip Van Winkle. My mind had moved on but my heart was stuck in an angry place. Unconsciously, I was looking for proof that the DC Comics of today was the same DC Comics I fought with thirty years ago.

Like I said, I’m an ass.

As Geoff Johns very kindly pointed out to me when I tried to explain my reason for carrying a grudge over the last dealings I had with the company, “Gerry, you’re talking about things that happened when I was twelve years old.”

It was a horrible, humiliating lightbulb moment.

I’m not just an ass, I’m a jackass.

So– Geoff, Dan, Jim, Larry– I’m sorry. Deeply, truthfully, painfully sorry. You deserve more respect and consideration than I’ve given you. I hope this very public apology makes that clear.