truxi-twice:Y’all. Don’t ask comic pros to drag other comic pros based on their writing/art. ...

truxi-twice:

Y’all.  Don’t ask comic pros to drag other comic pros based on their writing/art.  Just don’t.  It’s childish and kinda rude.  I see so many people send baiting questions (or outright demands for them to denounce folks) to pros, and it’s just like…even in the cases where they might agree with you, they’re still professionals.  This is a small community.  People have to be nice to each other–people want to be nice to each other, really–and the big secret about most comic pros?  They really want other artists/writers to succeed to.  The guy tearing other writers and artists down?  That’s the guy no one wants to work with.  And for good reason. 

And man, especially not if the offending crime is appropriation of something that it’s really easy to not know is appropriation.  Like, I get it, do research and all, but at this point, I’m still not really sure I’d call using “Bigfoot” to be appropriation, and it’s really understandable that someone wouldn’t think it was, since he’s still showing up in children’s cartoons and beef jerky commercials, so it seems like a more ubiquitous Americana legend than anything.  It may not be, but maybe don’t fly into a rage for most people not knowing that?

This is a very kind and thoughtful post. I appreciate it for all creators.

I am not afraid of commenting on things I think are wrong, even if it’s a friend who is doing them. But I don’t want to trash creators publicly for doing a story I disagree with, or saying some random oddball thing that just sounded stinky. 

But it’s not just professionalism, part of it is that I feel like people should have A chance to explain themselves, to clarify, or to apologize. I don’t have any interest in being someone who attacks people without hoping that maybe they just misspoke or were uninformed or had a bad day. I am so far from perfect, I have said so many thoughtless things over the years, and I have some genuinely nasty people analyzing everything I say…it’s a hard combination to deal with. It’s not an excuse, it’s just not being flawless and perfectly perceptive. I am always rooting for people to better because I hope I can do better, I want to mess up less often, you know?

But the other thing is, I always feel like that sort of hits at the joy of reading good fiction. If I see a movie I love, I never feel like my enjoyment of that film is somehow made better by knowing the director was an asshole or the main actor was a shithead. Comics are important to me, they have been the thing that kept me going when I was poor as dirt, or sick as a dog, or when I was a lonely kid growing up. That feeling that comics can bring joy to people is a big deal to me. I always feel like too much sour grapes can really affect that. I feel like even the amount of stuff I HAVE talked about was really pretty unnecessary (in terms of stuff that has happened to me personally, not things that the industry needs to fix).  But sometimes you have to let some of that stuff out.

I went on a rant again. :)

I just think that most comics creators are still fans, and on some level, we don’t want to drag our personal conflicts into the spotlight in a way that makes it less fun to read Spider-man or JLA or whatever.

My desire to vent sometimes feels a lot less important than that…when someone’s reading one of my comics, that the entire team worked so hard on, I hate to think that they are actually thinking of some angry tumblr post I wrote on a bad day. :)

Anyway, that’s my advice to aspiring creators. No one is saying you have to be silent when something is wrong or unjust. You should speak up when it’s called for. But the smaller stuff, I feel that can really diminish the joy. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know the answer.