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incogvito · 7 years

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This is Unimportant

Because, in the grand scheme of things, I am unimportant. And while that won’t ring true for every aspect of my life (I am important to my family, my friends, etc), to a large degree, say 99% of the Earth’s population, I don’t matter. (This isn’t a pity party. Just hang with me.)

So, if I don’t matter, the things I care about mean even less. To that same 99%, the amazing things my kids do are not just unimportant, they’re irrelevant. And guess what? That’s fine. That is absolutely normal and expected, really. But if you were to put me in a situation where I had to care...something like the relief efforts for Harvey and Irma and Maria...where I might not necessarily know the person across from me, that changes. You might say that empathy is required. And that’s really what I want to talk about. The things that are required, and the things that are expected.

See, there is currently a culture war being “fought” in this country. To those outside of the US, this is completely ridiculous, I’m sure, but in a way, totally expected. The person that was elected as President of the United States, before the election, was a celebrity. And further, he was a celebrity that, while never really doing anything that makes a celebrity celebrated (he bought buildings), he is someone that, excuse the terminology, “gets off” on being famous. He is, in a weird way, part of a pop culture moment (that moment being the 1980′s, aka the Me Generation); I think the first time I saw him was on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, a tv “magazine” show that explored the glitzy side of wealth. Money and wealth was important in the Era of Reagan, and that’s kind of getting off topic, but it’s important context. The 80′s made celebrities of guys like Lee Iacocca and, you guessed it, Donald Trump. So, for Trump, being not just in the public eye, but being a part of the social conversation, was (and still is) important to him. It’s the whole basis for his being. Which is why he makes tweets that are so incendiary; Twitter and tweeting is social currency. His speeches have less to do with policy (of which he has none other than destroying the legacy of Barack Obama) and more to do with what is happening on TV. It’s why he goes after NFL players. Or Broadway shows. Or ESPN anchors. He cares less about things like Detroit’s water, and more about things like the Detroit Lions*.

Take that, and then push out from there, to his influence. His base feels emboldened to criticize things that, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn’t matter to a politician; A movie star talking about climate change; an athlete that kneels in protest; things that only matter to us, the people, because we are generally looking for someone in that position to speak about something we care about. Or, the opposite; we want a leader to validate something that we, the people, don’t want to care about. Trump took three days to talk about the violence in Charlottesville because he doesn’t care about it. He cares about Q ratings. He cares about approval. It’s why he vacillated so much in his responses. He cares about celebrity and fame. So, his base attacks things that are part of pop culture; films, music, tv shows, and...I’m finally getting to my point...comic books.

Let’s go back to the idea of the things that are expected of us and the things that are required of us. Without naming names and giving credence to a lot of, frankly, stupid ideology, I’m going to cut right to it. There’s a comic book reviewer that has this notion that Marvel Comics and DC Entertainment are out of touch with what today’s reader wants to read. As far as I know, those are the only two companies he has targeted in his ire, but I could be wrong; he may have said something about Dark Horse or Boom! Studios or Image...I don’t know for sure (I would imagine this to be the case). A lot of his arguments stem from the idea of diversity hires affecting the finished product. Things like transgender authors, or black artists. Or things like female characters being drawn in “untraditional” (read: unsexy) ways. Or of a writer injecting his or her political ideology into the stories. A lot of it is navel gazing and totally besides the point, but it caught fire this week when Mark Waid (note: a personal friend) posted on a private Facebook page that he was looking for this individual and screenshots of that got leaked (note: I was a member of that private page). The context of Mark’s statements were that he wanted to engage in dialogue with the reviewer in person at Baltimore Comic Con, but his words were written in the moment and probably came off as more incendiary than intended (as evidenced by his later posts, the same day/night, once the leak happened). I’m not going to defend Mark; don’t need to or want to. Again, I want to talk about requirements and expectations and how they pertain to comic books and comic book reviewing.

(I fully apologize for what’s about to come, because it’s 2017 and I have to write this, and I’m 44 and people should know better, but oh well, I guess.)

When you buy a comic book (or DVD, or what have you), there is only one requirement; you are required to read it. Actually, you’re required to pay for it and expected to read it (and there are some that don’t pay because either they get comps, or the publisher sends out PDF’s, or they pirate the books). That’s it. Buy and read. You are expected to have an opinion based on this, because generally speaking, we all do. I read a comic by a creator a few weeks ago, another friend, and it was my opinion that this was not his best work, and a waste of his abilities. But... YOU’RE NOT **REQUIRED** TO SHARE THAT OPINION. Crazy, right? Look, I’m not saying you can’t say, “This comic was a waste of my time,” especially if you’re getting paid to do so. But if someone hands you a stack of books and asks you to review the books, you’re review should be about the contents of the book, not the creator working on it. I’m in the camp that believes we should spend more time writing about the things we like, and spending less time destroying the things we don’t care about. I used to work in a comic store (almost 11 years) and my boss had what he called, “the third aisle rule,” or something similar. The philosophy is this; while you and a customer are dogging something in aisle one, over in aisle three is a reader who has that same book and now, due to hearing you trash it, doesn’t want to buy it because a) she’s too embarrassed to bring it to the counter or b) she’d rather buy her books somewhere else that she won’t be ridiculed for her choices. Ostensibly, it’s about not losing a sale. We were encouraged to praise the books we loved, but if we didn’t like something, we were asked to not talk about it at all.

One of the things that was brought up in one of these articles that popped up in the aftermath of that leak was that the guy (and now I’m legit blanking on his name) made comments about diversity hires, pointing out one writer who was selected for the DC Writer’s Workshop. He claims that the writer was selected purely because she is a transgender woman (I need to apologize here because the article used the male pronoun and because I’m unfamiliar with the writer he was targeting, I am not sure if I’m using the correct pronoun, or if the article writer was trying to be intentionally controversial, so I am just going on my best guess). Here’s the thing about diversity hires; he has no right to question anyone’s hiring practices. He does a YouTube review “show.” As far as I know, he isn’t a comic book writer (but one of his buddies that, I think, initially leaked the screenshot is a writer and might have written comics? I’m unclear, but moving on). As far as I know, DC hiring her did not take food off of his table.

But guess what?

It took food off of MY table.

How?

Because I “auditioned” for the same Writer’s Workshop.

But, this is the funny part. Instead of tearing apart someone I don’t know, or a process I wasn’t a part of, I just got over it. It stung for a day, sure; rejection is never easy, but ultimately WHO CARES WHO DC HIRES? Just give me a good book. At the end of the day, I’m still a fan; I still want to be entertained.

And to this guy and his friends, in their minds, in this scenario, DC took an opportunity away from a white man (which, I’m sorry, I’m Puerto Rican and Italian, and while my name is more Italian, I was raised by my mom’s family, so I identify with my Hispanic side). Is it so controversial that DC maybe thinks I’m not a good writer? And that she is? And why do you care? Or, the other side of it; that hiring someone that is fringe (I guess) or left of center harms these characters that we’ve known for 70 years or less (depending on the character we’re talking about at that moment). This is the weird gatekeeping of culture that somehow, someone who doesn’t own that character or idea feels they have ownership over. It’s all so...backwards. If DC hires six women to write a book, it doesn’t affect me. Because I was never offered the book, but I still get to do my comic, I still can raise money on Kickstarter, and I am still generally content to work like this. I don’t need a hero or anyone to defend me, and I think that these precious white cis gendered heterosexual male writers they’re going to bat for probably don’t either.

I say it again and again, but you’re holding on too tightly to something that isn’t yours.

Using your platform (YouTube, a blog, Twitter) to critique a comic is neither an expectation or a requirement, but yeah, it’s your right. But you have no right to attack a creator that’s just trying to make a living. If you want to be a Fox News pundit/talking head, they keep firing people, so as long as you keep it in your pants, I’m sure they’ll hire you. It worked for Tomi Lahren (is that how you spell it?). If you want to make comics that reflect your way of thinking, and you want to hire whoever it is that speaks to your mentality, go right ahead. They did one about that Stick guy. Go on to Kickstarter, GoFundMe or Patreon. I’m sure there’s at least 100 people that will side with you and want to read that. That’s the beauty of it; you can put your ideas in action. Marvel and DC are multimedia conglomerates (Disney and Warner Brothers, respectively). They (the companies) don’t care about anything other than making money. So, if you don’t want it, don’t buy it. But if you’re buying it just to make some sort of statement...you’re probably an idiot. Then again, you’re probably pirating the comics anyway.

I have as much right as anyone to be angry or upset about these hiring practices (if that’s what they are), but I really don’t care. I do not sit at my computer looking at Newsarama and seething over who got hired on a book. I write comics.

Like I said, this is unimportant.

*EDIT: In case you thought this was stupid or that I don’t know what I’m talking about, please refer to the very last sentence here:

#comics

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