That was equally exciting as well as insightful!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

Thank you, Biljana, Theadora, Abitjuakali, Antonie, Stella, Melanie, GUELPH, CAMBRIDGE, KITCHENER, WATERLOO, Anna and Maria!

Hi Lakshmi and Killkaties…thank you!

Thanks, Geneve!

Hi Violetski…thank you!

Aw, that’s sort of heartbreaking, Allen. A very well done gesture, so heavy shouldered.
I like your mustached man, too. : )

what’s the purpose of showing Starbucks etc. on the left?
and why do you think he’s ugly?

Hi Karen, Thank you! He has ostracized look.
Yes…my new header guy.

The purpose of the Starbucks logo is not to be taken literally. It’s subjective. It’s a cafe and has value as a cultural icon. And it’s not him that’s ugly…you have to “read between the lines.” Hope you understand more.

I can imagine the temptation to sit in cafes a long time if you’re observing people

hard for me to recognize the handwriting…

You pretty much completely missed the entire point…

I’d like to hear your thoughts, then?

What part of “people aren’t solely defined by the minority/majority group they belong to” didn’t you understand?

Americans always seem so eager to find stuff to get offend by…
(see what I did there?)

Thank you for pointing out the stupidity! You sum up my feelings on this pretty well.

“What part of “people aren’t solely defined by the minority/majority group they belong to” didn’t you understand?”

The part where Alex clearly said that ANY reference to that minority group as being unique in some way is a bad, bad thing, I would assume.

I saw the headline, and thought ‘Marvelman??’

Yes- this is a pretty freaky scene and I’m with you on this Steve. It has the tone of a strangely fascist speech though I’m not exactly sure what phrase strikes that note for me. Maybe it’s the odd triumphalism?
This solidarity he’s going for comes at the cost of hiding difference to put non mutants at ease.
Dislike.

I think I can see what Remender was going for with this idea, but it seems he didn’t really think it through very well, which ended up ruining the intended effect of Havok’s speech and generating quite a few dark implications.

The way the speech was written, it gives off the impression that “mutant” is a pejorative word, which is ridiculous in the context of the Marvel universe. The word has always been used as a means to refer to a particular group of people with a specific genetic configuration, and there’s nothing inherently pejorative in it. They are mutants, which of course doesn’t mean that they aren’t also humans.

It would have been perfect if instead of “mutant”, Alex condemned the use of the word “mutie” or something like that, which is a pejorative way of making reference to mutants, much like “nigger” is an offensive, pejorative way of calling people with black skin and “faggot” is an offensive, pejorative way of calling homosexual people.

Unless, of course, Remender aims to make Havok look like a fool. If so, I’d call this scene a resounding success.

(By the way, I’m not a hater. I enjoy this series. But this scene was very bad indeed)

Didn’t Peter David already cover this ground twenty years ago in X-FACTOR by having Guido/Strong Guy prefer the term “GeeCees” (Short for Genetically Challenged)?

I think what he was going for was something like this:

I’m left-handed. And in any conversation relating to handedness, obviously my left-handedness should be pertinent. But in pretty much any other conversation, it’s irrelevant. For mutants, their mutancy has been treated as if that is the whole of their person, as if being left-handed was something that was so important about me that it defined everything I did. So what Alex is saying is, don’t call me “Left-Hander” or suggest that all of us “left-handers” are some organized religion with common goals and traits (other than the one). “Left-hander” is perfectly fine to say when actually talking about handedness, but otherwise shouldn’t be referenced.

I agree with Chad B. This is a very well thought out speech that says what I’ve felt for a long time. People become to attached to their heritage, traditions, orientations, family history, and so on, to the point where they fear stepping outside of it. Media inflates and perpetuates these ideas and sells them back to the masses, encouraging stereotypes. Large groups of people buy into these stereotypes to the point where they fear stepping outside them, because of pride or social scorn from “their own kind” or bigots, and as a result, never give themselves the opportunity to define themselves as an individual. This does not mean turning away from those incidental details of where you come form, what color your skin is, or whom you chose to love. It just means that they don’t factor into who you are as defined by your intent and your actions. I am dyslexic, ADHD, and have Aspergers. They are part of what I am. I’m not ashamed of that, but they are not who I am. If that was all anybody ever thought of me as, or if they tried to use it to say that what I had to say or do didn’t matter, because of it, I’d be pretty mad. They are not the choices I make. Do you think Oscar Wilde wanted to be known as Oscar Wilde the gay man or Oscar Wilde the great writer? Being gay was incidental. It’s nothing to be ashamed of and it unfortunately wasn’t socially or legally acceptable in his time, but it didn’t define him as a writer. Nor does it Clive Barker, who is very proud to be gay. Steven Spielberg is Jewish. Do you think 100 years from now when people looked him up, all people would find about him was that he was a Jewish man, or do you think he’d rather people read about his accomplishments as a great director, who happened to be of that particular religious view. I know Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t like the “N word” and wouldn’t want to be defined by it, but rather as the man who said this: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” In other words, “Call me Alex.” If that’s alarming to anybody, than I’m a little alarmed at them. But hey, maybe that’s just the Aspergers talking, right?

@Glen Simpson:

Great point. But I think the speech failed because it didn’t draw a line between, on the one hand, using the word “mutant” as an instrument to forcefully and unecessarily set appart people that are essentially the same and, on the other hand, simply using it to describe people with certain genetic/social/fenotypical characteristics.

Applying what Havok’s speech to your example, he would have said that “left-handed person” is the “L-word” (“L-expression”, in this case”), which is weird to say the least

@Leandro – I guess I just took that as a given. He’s not talking to scientists or geneticists, he’s talking to regular people. So in his philosophy, regular people have no reason to use the word mutant on a day-to-day basis.

In some ways this ties to the whole business of why Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four are heroes but the X-Men are freaks, because for some irrational reason the general public in the Marvel U thinks gaining powers through some accident is OK but being born with them is freaky.

@Christopher Moonlight – I think Spielberg would like to be remembered as a great director who was Jewish. I think Oscar Wilde would have be thrilled to see a world where the fact that he was gay was just as celebrated as his writing. Because I think you’re mistaken to say that neither of those facts define them as creators.

It’s been well established in Wilde biographies that he didn’t start to really flourish as a writer until he embraced his homosexuality. Furthermore, The Picture of Dorian Gray was roundly denounced when it came out because of the homoerotic undertones. And the “living a double life” theme returns over and over again in his work, because that’s what he was doing in his life. And he was imprisoned because he dared to love another man publicly. You can’t say “it’s not important to who he was” when his life was DESTROYED by anti-gay bigotry, driving him to an early grave. Maybe you don’t think it was important to his WORK, but it was a driving force in his LIFE, behind who he WAS.

Spielberg, meanwhile, has directed a number of films dealing with bigotry in its various stripes, not just anti-Semitism but also racism, and has set up a Holocaust remembrance project that records the testimony of survivors. Does he want his Jewishness ignored? I’m sure if you mentioned it to him, he’d smack you across the face. He grew up knowing that up until the year before he was born, people across the Atlantic were being slaughtered by the MILLIONS for a heritage they shared. Forget Schindler’s List, anti-Semitism still shaped who Spielberg IS.

Speaking as a woman, I can tell you that I don’t want my femaleness ignored when it comes to anything I do. I don’t want to be successful on the grounds of people pretending I’m not a woman, or “in spite” of the fact that I’m a woman, I want to be successful because people get over their preconceptions and entrenched prejudices, and accept my gender as part of the whole package. MLK said he didn’t want his children judged by the color of their skin, but I doubt he wanted it to be ignored either. Because you know what that says to women or people of color? It says “You’re so great I forgot you were black/a woman!” As if either of those things are mutually exclusive to achievement.

When the rights of your people are attacked, severely restricted, when your people have historically been imprisoned, killed, enslaved, raped, deprived of property and suffrage (and still are in certain parts of the world), or been told there are certain things they are constitutionally incapable of doing (e.g. reading, science, math, politics) because of WHO THEY ARE, it is a MASSIVE insult to suggest they aren’t profoundly shaped by that history. You even point out that “media inflates and perpetuates stereotypes”–as if the media starts out with clean hands, instead of being founded on the same prejudices as the rest of society. I don’t know a single woman, LGBT person, or person of color who doesn’t rail against the stereotypes the media perpetuates about them.

So when it comes to mutants in the Marvel Universe, who have historically been attacked, legally and physically, by homo sapiens, it rings so, so false to have Havok disown that identity. And I note that the person who wrote this scene is a straight white man. In my experience, straight white men are very, very fond of telling everyone else to stop talking about how “We’re all one race– the human race! I’m not a feminist, I’m an equalist! Love who you want, but don’t shove it in my face!” Each and every one of those phrases is guaranteed to piss off the group they’re directed to. Because IF ONLY it were that easy for us.

Ugh, in that last paragraph of mine, put “their differences” after “stop talking about”.

@Glenn Simpson: I wholeheartedly agree with you. Also, @Christopher Moonlight above also sums up brilliantly the problem that apparently Remender was trying to tackle. It really is something that plagues our society, and even worse than that is the fact that so few people realize how stupid this custom of sticking labels to people really is (with mainstream media being the greatest perpetuators of this shameful practice).

My problem with the speech is that – in my opinion – there was a gap between what Remender wanted to convey and what he actually had the character say.

I’m going to go out on the limb and await for someone to inevitably cut the limb while I’m out there. I don’t see what the character Alex says as being offensive at all. He’s asking to be included. If you swapped out today’s difficult social norm identifiers, it would make complete sense. We want identity but also uniqueness. A trans-woman wants to be called “she” and “woman” not a “trans-woman.” How is what Alex saying any different? He’s saying “mutant” is a label based on something physical that he had no choice in making. He identifies as a man and wants to be called a man. And like story arcs historically show us, he will probably change his own view of himself at least twice the way other X-gened people have.

Given Marvel’s sliding time scale, I think it’s safe to assume that Hiroshima is, no longer, part of Sunfire’s origin. If his mother died, then, the character would be pushing 70.

@Amber, a transwoman asks to be called “she” because she IDENTIFIES as a woman. But when lawmakers try to tell her she can’t get hormone therapy or change her gender on state documents or use women’s bathrooms, or when she’s beaten, raped, and/or killed for being trans (as far, far too many trans people are) saying “we’re all human, let’s get along” is a sick joke.

What I took away from this was Alex Summers denouncing his brother’s hubris while asking the world to start referring to mutants as “Alexes”.

Doesn’t it all depend on the connotations attached to the word in question? Of course “the L-word sounds weird;
Wog isn’t an acceptable word to describe African-Americans in the USA, but it is widely used in Australia with fewer negative connotations for a different ethnic group.
Mutant-kind’s reputation has recently been tainted in the Marvel universe so Havok wishes to dissociate himself from the connotations the word carries at the moment. I say fair enough.

Couldn’t agree less with this article. Nothing pointed out here makes his effects on comics history less disastrous. By mixing analysis with biased normative ideology Wertham did unimaginable damage to comics as a medium. Without him comics might have been accepted as a serious art form next to movies and literature by now. The article highlights Wertham’s formal values by radically downplaying the socio-cultural effects of his work. This analytic relativism (“okay, he ruined the reception of comics forever, but he actually did it in a pretty clever way”) is, to my understanding, utterly inadmissible. No, no and no.

@Kater At no point do I embrace the effects. To the contrary, the post is about how to be more effective in preventing such effects. Step number 1: understand what the other side is saying.

This is particularly important when dealing with someone with evident insight and integrity. The same research by the same man we now ridicule as a charlatan played a crucial role in bringing down segregation–it’s something we studied at Yale Law School back in the day, focusing on the Court’s revolutionary reliance on sociological research as the basis of constitutional reasoning. If any academic deserved to be “imperious” about his insight, I’d vote for the guy whose work persuaded the Supreme Court to desegregate the U.S.

When dealing with Wertham, I believe that the industry would have been better served by using some rhetorical jiu jitsu. The same goes for today. Unfortunately, the industry itself did not fully understand the significance of comics as a medium, and Wertham’s opposition blinded it to the potential utility of his insights as the basis for an educational strategy that would treated comics as a serious medium much sooner, not to mention even more so than they are today.

Obviously Wertham had the rhetorical upper hand at the times – the seasoned intellectual vs. the young new medium run by much less educated businessmen. There were no comics intellectuals in the 50s, noone who could or would defend the medium on the academic battlefield, not until about ten years later (and on the other side of the atlantic ocean with Eco & co.).
So the super-villian view on Werthan is acutally spot-on: The genius mind who uses every deception in his power to fight the defenseless vistim of his choice: comics. And Wertham didn’t fight fair. That has been pretty much proven by Tilley’s research. His goal was the destruction of the comics medium and industry, and he did everything he could to achieve it. Of course Wertham wasn’t an idiot. He knew exactly what he had to do to achieve his goal, and thus turned out very successful. If manipulation of his research helped his course, who was there to expose him?
But what I really don’t get is your insistance in his part of the ending of seggregation. What has that to do with anything? He did “good” then, so that makes him less of a villainous scum in regard to comics? That’s what I call relativism, excuse me. This is not about Wertham’s karma points as a person but about his role in comics history, and that remains unchanged by deeds of the “other” Wertham.
You also forget, though he may have done some good in the context of US history, his devestating impact on comics was felt internationally. In Germany, for example, his writings were well recieved by the cultural critics of the Frankfurt school, most notably Adorno and Horkheimer, who hated comics maybe eben more than Wertham did. Their influence, fueled by Wertham’s writings, led to extensive book burnings of comics in Germany (only about ten years after the downfall of the nazi regime that used a similar strategy of cultural ciriticism). Unlike in the US, the German comics scene never really recovered from this and artists here still suffer from extreme prejudice about their work and its cultural significance.
So Wertham + comics = big, big, big damage. No other way to look at it. You can look for and find insightful perspectives about his work, but to claim Wertham was right? Ouch!

Great posting Jeff! I’d also like to add that Wertham seemed to have a very keen sense of marketing in that he was able to place his opinions in front of adults, who at that time, trusted ‘the experts’ and the government.

Another element folks tend to forget is how society was changing at that time. We had the McCarthy witch hunts, rock and roll was blowing up and comics became the scape goat. However, nothing happens overnight. The bias against comics goes back to the days of Pulitzer and Hearst and even the beginnings of educational organizations like the National Council of Teachers of English…many of the principals of these groups were literary elitists who were determined to argue that literacy could only be achieved through text and not include images. With the onset of the Cold War and the fear mongering that accompanied it society needed something to blame for it all. Comics took the beating because so few had the balls to stand up and fight back.
Now comics are finally making a recovery though it probably doesnt look anything like most would have anticipated. There are still those who refuse to recognize the value of comics as a brilliant form of communication but they are now the fading minority. Thank god!

I think Wertham expressed himself just fine. He was a decent writer.

He thought “crime” comics were contributing to juvenile delinquency. He wanted “crime” comics to be off the racks, sold only to adults upon request. He also defined “crime” comics as any comic depicting a crime and even said the ‘so called good comics’ (eg the Funny Animal type) were worse than the actual crime comics. He also said that the “good” comics were so few they were not worth talking about. Oh, and that comic books were hurting children’s reading abilities.

But that was wrong. How he came to that conclusion doesn’t really matter IMO. It doesn’t really matter if he was using the most respected progressive research techniques of the times or if he said it because a talking burrito told him to.

When it comes to censorship, it’s not so much about research as it is about what the Constitution (and other laws) say and arguing to get it enforced as (we think) it’s supposed to be. People will always come up with new reasons to why something should be censored, be it (faulty) research and/or (misguided) moral arguments. Why these things are wrong we already know.

Comics do influence people, but does not force them to do bad things against their will. Influencing people is not illegal. If you don’t like some form of media, you can choose not to participate in it or give it to your children. For everybody else it’s a free country and they can and do have the freedom to choose different than you.

They also might not:
A) the same conclusion you might have. EG Crime Does Not Pay might actually be about convincing kids to NOT become criminals instead of becoming them.
B) disagree with the way they are trying to get that message across.
C) think the influence is bad or harmful. They might think it’s just entertainment and nothing more.
Among other things.

I just got back from the interesting panel on Wertham at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art. Had a chance to chat with Carol Tilley herself–but before we get to that, a few responses:

@Kater Determining truth value on the basis of the effects raises its own questions vis a vis relativism. Saying someone got something right is not the same thing as agreeing with what they do with that assessment–it’s possible to accept that 1 + 1 = 2 even if the counter is a murderer putting bullets in a gun.

I would dispute that Tilley’s research proves that Wertham didn’t fight fair. As Craig Yoe, Wertham’s biographer and others noted at the event tonight, shaping anecdotes in a popular narrative, especially when dealing with confidential identities, is common. Moreover, even if we accept that all the assessments in Tilley’s article are correct, it has little if any impact on the points he was making.

As for Wertham’s work on Brown, it does indeed matter. People are complex. Disagreeing with one perspective or sphere of action doesn’t mean I can’t respect the good a person does in other areas. In fact, acknowledging that good can help understand the arguments with which I disagree, which in turn can help in answering them.

@John Wertham certainly was media savvy. As for literary elites and the bias against images–yes indeed. The world was ending.

@Jamie Hi! Like you, I would differ with Wertham in the negative valence of his analysis and recommendations. However, he did intuitively grasp the power effect of children’s media, something we see today with kids and iPads. In fact, I arrived home tonight to a copy of the latest Atlantic, whose cover story on the touchscreen generation is essentially a modern variant on Wertham’s assessment of the sensory effects of funny animal comics.

As mentioned above, I had a chance to chat with Carol Tilley, who was most gracious. Disagreement is part of life, and it’s always nice when that doesn’t get in the way of a pleasant conversation.

One thing I mentioned to her is my appreciation for the fact that her article does include a nice rundown of Wertham’s career, to which she returns at the end. This is something that tends to get left out in articles about her article, where the tendency is to celebrate Wertham’s allegedly being discredited as a lying fraud.

Tilley did note her disagreement with my assertion that “the article slags the man’s entire reputation for veracity” on the basis of his work on comics. To be fair, the last paragraph does express her sense of being “conflicted” and not wanting to add herself to Wertham’s detractors.

That said, after the event I re-read the article again a couple of times and compiled a list of references to Wertham. No doubt I am over-sensitive, but when I read that someone “manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence,” engaged in “numerous falsifications and distortions,” “privileged his interests … at the expense of systematic and verifiable science,” “played fast and loose with the data,” and exhibited a “willingness to alter details to fit his rhetorical need,” I tend not see this as an endorsement of a researcher’s overall character.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that the article does not limit its negative assessment of Wertham to his work on comics. Consider the following from page 403:

“Wertham’s treatment of evidence in Seduction and his responses to questions about his comics-related research were indicative of a larger pattern of spurious and questionable behaviors. Gabriel Mendes, in his historical examination of the Lafargue Clinic, notes that ‘throughout his entire career in psychiatry Wertham would continuously fail to observe the codes of professionalism that marked one as a candidate for institutional leadership and prestige in the wider world.’”

This paragraph goes onto to cite Mendes’ description of Wertham in terms of the cardinal sin of most academic innovators–being (gasp!) uncollegial–and goes on to cite Wertham’s alleged “temperamental and imperious” demeanor in his work for the NAACP. If this isn’t an indictment of Wertham and his entire career in a way that goes beyond his alleged lies, deceptions, manipulations, self-serving distortions, etc. in regard to comics, well, mea culpa, tho I think it’s understandable how a reader could reach that conclusion.

[...] History | Was Fredric Wertham right? Jeff Trexler takes the road less traveled in a thoughtful essay that gets to the heart of what Wertham was really talking about. [The Beat] [...]

I wish people, in this day and age, would be smart enough to tell the difference between McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

BTW, the Library of Congress has a guide to the content of its collection of Wertham’s papers. He did many things besides write Seduction of the Innocent:

Wertham wrote more than a hundred articles and essays on subjects such as battered children, violence in comic books, movies, and television, the problems of parenting, juvenile delinquency, the Vietnam War, the mass media, and sex crimes. He was a prodigious reviewer of books, critiquing more than a hundred during his lifetime. [. . .]

Wertham’s literary interests went beyond his own professional bounds, however, as evidenced by his reviews of works by Matthew Josephson, Richard Kluger, Arthur Miller, Norman Vincent Peale, and Richard Wright. He was a tireless public speaker, and during his professional career participated in more than one hundred interviews and delivered almost as many speeches and lectures. Wertham also composed poems and short stories and wrote frequently to newspaper and magazine editors.

SRS

I wonder if there are any parallels with the violence in comics and video games. Comics were heavily censored, video games to a much lesser extent. By looking at today’s VG industry, can we make a guess at what the comic industry would have become?

Wow. I’m sorry, but this reads like a college essay by somebody who didn’t actually read the material. Every other sentence is pure hyperbole. No references, no quotes, no sourcing, no stats, and throwing out every iconic keyword/phrase as though to either a) skyrocket to the top of the google search engine stepladder or b) masturbate the author’s pop culture and scholarly know-how. You could have at least quoted one of the books you were attempted to discuss. Don’t assume everybody has read what you have or interprets it the same way.

I mean, really … you keep referencing things without telling your readers what your referencing. That’s what politicians do in order to mislead constituents (or people who are lying without actually lying) not writers!

Just a little disgusted. Please write better in the future and don’t use filler words and phrases just to hit your word length goal.

@swampy Interesting question. One reason Wertham persists as a bogeyman is the ongoing threat of censorship of video games & other new media–that’s the no so subtle subtext of the response, as the CBLDF link illustrates. Part of me wonders whether the 1950s crackdown had something like a cultural Streisand effect vis a vis EC-style horror, which otherwise might have gone the way of the western.

RDM: This wasn’t written for a peer-reviewed journal, and it was not written with SEO in mind at all. It was an opinion piece, pure and simple, and its context is the comics community’s discussions of comics as a medium, censorship + Fredric Wertham, the latter of which has escalated in recent weeks. I could easily have loaded this with pin cites and quotes given world enough and time.

I didn’t make statistical arguments; hence, no statistics. My word-length goal was about 2/5th of what I actually wrote, so clearly I screwed up there.

Re not naming my references in the article, there are actually links to some pieces and in a world with Google, mentioning names of folks such as Fredric Wertham, Marshall McLuhan & Walter Ong is an invitation to search if you want to learn more.

As I hope my comments show, I love discussion and debate. I invite you and any other reader to read the main specific references in mind as I wrote (Seduction of the Innocent; Tilley’s article; McLuhan’s Understanding Media + Take Today; Walter Ong’s Orality & Literacy) and show me where I’m wrong.

Also worth checking out: books on the eugenics movement, such as Edwin Black’s War against the Weak, and research pertaining to Brown v Board, including studies of Jewish involvement in the African-American civil rights movement.

I think this was kind of interesting, but In the end, Wertham’s conclusions were wrong to a massive degree. What about Wertham’s examples of triangular shaped shading on someone’s shoulder representing a pubic area? Its been a while since I’ve read Seduction of the Innocent, but I remember laughing at a lot of utter nonsense in there! Maybe you can cut him some slack because research wasn’t as rigorous as it is today, but it was still poorly done and was directed towards ruining an art form and the lives of those who created it.

The sloppiness in Wertham’s book is evident in that he doesn’t even provide enough information for anyone else to investigate his claims about specific comic books for themselves. Other than when covers are shown, Wertham doesn’t cite the issues he lifts panels from. The so-called “bibliography” which was removed from many copies was nothing more than a dizzying list of the arcane DBA’s that many publishers used. People have spent years tracking down what the actual comic books portrayed by Wertham in his book are because Wertham chose not to tell us. Real research books employ footnotes so that the reader look up things for themselves. No such help is provided by Wertham’s book.

Lars Brown is the author of the North World graphic novels, that were published by Oni Press. really fun reads, by the way.

Thanks for the tip, Matt.- they look pretty cool. Found a cheap volume of the first book and ordered it!

My Marvel and DC pulls have been dwindling, Marvel for quite some time and DC very recently. My Non-Big-2 pulls have been increasing greatly. This reflects my saturation of super hero stories and attention to crime and high-concept sci-fi stories. And I love it!

I was on auto-pilot for awhile… then about 3 years ago, I stopped doing my monthly pull list altogether. As I got older (now 35 also), my priorities changed..kids, house, etc. I just didn’t have time, money or even the room for monthly books. I was buying only trades for awhile, then started buying digital once I got a Kindle Fire. I still don’t buy things consistently, but will occasionally buy a few issues in a row on Comixology if there’s a sale. I did however start another pull list at my LCS… for my kids! All Adventure Time and My Little Pony books. We usually go once a month to pick them up. It makes them happy and makes me happy as well.

“Am I just not finding new muses? ”

Yes, this is the case. Of the current crop of Marvel and DC writers that have come to prominence in the last 5-7 years , I’ve only found Hickman to be of interest. He hasn’t stopped working on his own series and is able to put a distinct stamp on his corporate work. As you experienced, previous favorites are pulling back or working in other media and I have not found new writers of the same calibre to replace them.

Another factor is a lessening of focus on manga. With 20th Century Boys ending, I think I might be down to zero books from Viz.

You know (this is kinda sorta about this subject) I’ve become one of those INSANE people who look through an entire stack of Superior Spiderman to find the “perfect” copy. I used to look at these people and laugh at them. And it’s pretty much impossible to find a perfect copy with Marvel’s new “self-cover” covers, which are utter garbage. Valiant isn’t much better. I think their printer’s employees roll all over their comics before they’re shipped to the stores. Always with the creases and crinkles and WTF, Valiant? But all this is to say, I think it has to do with money. (I refuse to believe I’ve simply gone insane.) As time has gone by, money gets tighter the older you get, and comic prices have gone way up (oh 65 cents comics when I first began collecting, you were so grand), my comics pull total is around $120 now (before store discount of 10%.) WHICH is insane. I used to only buy around $65 a month. But the prices have made the costs of comics crazy. And I think in turn, I want my books to be perfect darnnit, because I’m paying good money for these floppy things! That, or I’ve just gone nuts in my old(er) age…

I’m 50 and my buying pattern has exactly paralleled yours. Tapering off the Big Two, shifting more to Image and independents, and generally reducing my overall purchasing. My weekly purchase is less than half of what it was in the ’90s, and that’s with the price increases. So I’m buying maybe a third of the books I bought then? I buy absolutely NONE of the Big Two’s flagship titles any more.

Around 2004 or so, I basically said screw this, I’m not paying for something I don’t really, really want. Every week I always arranged my comics from stuff I most want to read to stuff I least want to read, and so I cut all the crap from the back of the pile that I was reading purely from habit. ALL of it.

I do maintain a pull, for the discount, but it’s mostly Image, independents, and some of the last remnants of Vertigo, with a few Marvel/DC titles that aren’t tied to massive crossovers (and of course those are the titles which get cancelled a lot), and a generous helping of the all-ages titles (which also don’t last long any more).

I refuse to buy on auto-pilot any more — my shop is happy to adjust my pull at a moment’s notice, so I take full advantage. If I find a title is consistently at the back of my reading pile, it’s gone.

I do look for that ‘individual voice’ you mention. It’s missing in most of the Big Two books, particularly those that participate in crossovers, so I don’t buy much from them. The few times the ‘voice’ shows up, it typically doesn’t last long. And doesn’t often get replaced. So my list thins even more.

“I’m still waiting for the second volume of Jeff Parker’s Interman”

Ha! I thought I was the only one.

“I’ve always been a proponent of buying off the shelf, not the pull list”

Same here. I’ve never set up a pull list in my life, but then again I’ve been lucky enough to live in areas with many good shops nearby. The first store I visit every Wednesday gives at least 15% discount even if you don’t have a pull list.

Wrong Ninth Art! You want this one: http://www.ninthart.org/

Fixed! It’s just not an authentic Steve Morris experience unless I get at least ONE thing wrong

There’s a bit of Ninth Art itself that could be fixed – the clue is in the URL:

http://www.ninthart.org/authorindex.php?author=Paul+O\%27Brien

Heidi,

Well said and a very interesting piece. I wish there was a way to market kindness and netiquette with the same “cool” cache’ that many I know assign to negative and self-destructive behaviors, e.g., how much alcohol/drugs they consumed & lived to tell about it, etc. It would be great to live in a world where those who were trolling and cyberbullying evolved into peaceful beings. How do we make kindness the new cool?

Denise

Yeah, that recent twitter blow-up with that troll and Mark Millar helping to shut him down was disturbing and I’m happy they took that psycho down. However, what you’re suggesting is ludicrous and dangerous for freedom of speech. I don’t think anyone wants the government to have such powerful eavesdropping capabilities that you’re suggesting.

Dealing with trolls is just the cost of living in a free society. Sorry.

The rest of this is interesting and wise, Torsten, but option 1 for a more civil internet is a terrible idea. Why? You answered it yourself with #2. And you can’t very well say “Well, but that’s only for people who deserve or need it” because the people who will use your paper trail against you never think you deserve your privacy or freedom.

And it isn’t just governments, though they’re the most prominent danger to life and limb. Employers, stalkers, internet trolls… if the information is hardcoded in there, however secret it’s supposed to be, it’s now there to be found. It’s simply not safe.

And it’s not just a matter of safe, it’s a matter of chilling effects. Anonymity – or at least psuedonymity – is a great gift of the internet. It lets people discuss, form commnunities and find support for all kinds of things that would be far more difficult with a real name attached.

Granted, sometimes these things are ridiculous, such as Otherkin (At heart, I’m secretly a unicorn! Or werewolf!) or a love of My Little Pony that might be embarassing for people of a certain age and gender. But in other cases it can be quite seriously important such as for people who are HIV positive or are concerned about some other disease, people who are concerned about things going on in their communities or place of business and people who for one reason or another just don’t fit in with the people around them.

Now, teaching children early that the Internet Is Forever, and you can never take back or erase words there that you regret, yes. That’s a good, even a vital concept. Trying to drum into their heads some sense that the people on the other side of the screen are real human beings who deserve respect is also important.

Weirdly, I think gossip and the eternal memory of the internet is another vital, civilizing force that we need more of rather than less. Everyone makes gaffes from time to time, but if someone has indulged in malicious behavior, fraud, plagiarism or abuse of power, then yes. They deserve the word of mouth reputation that comes with that, and other people deserve to be warned.

A couple of years ago I was standing outside, in a ..bad area, when a flat bed truck cam rushing up, the back of the thing packed with masked men, each holding an automatic weapon. I didn’t move and neither did my buddy. The guys on the truck mumbled among themselves for a moment and then it pulled away.. boy, I sure wish I had these evil tweeter-taker-downers there to protect me.

And then.. just this very evening:

I’m walking up 6th avenue, toward Times Square (admittedly, yeah, just a little in the bike lane.. but there’s plenty of room to pass) and this guy comes toward me on a ten speed, hunched down, doing his best Lance Armstrong .. 20 feet –15 –10 — I’m thinking .. gee.. this..this retard has plenty of room, he’s going to stop coming right-at-me at some point .. and so I just stop..don’t brace for impact or anything .. surely this retard will swerve (??) – and BOOM! .. idiot runs right into me – and rides off.
Boy, I sure could’a used some help from these evil-twitter-taker- downers with that one 2.

(Do you have anything interesting, relevant, or useful to contribute, Horatio?)

I was on rec.art.comics.* back in the day, and remember the dawn of Perpetual September. The internet was simply a different beast in those days. Access was a privilege granted through trust relationships (e.g. my college got on through a consortium of universities) rather than something you just bought from a commercial ISP. It was possible to enforce the social norms of the classic net, because it was actually conceivable to kick a rogue site or abusive user off!

But there’s no going back to that, any more than we can go back a society where everyone knew their neighbors. It’s too late to build that kind of authenticated accountability into the technology of the internet, and any attempt to do so would break it… either technologically or by sabotaging the cooperative nature of the net’s global participants.

Short version: wasn’t the internet much better before all those OTHER people got hold of it.

I was online prior to September 1993, and yes, UYSENET (and therefore, the whole internet) was substantially better before AOL peered with it.

However, there’s nothing I resent more than a service that excludes some people because I’ve made a deliberate choice to obscure my online identity. No, I don’t want to join your online credentialing service. No, I don’t have a Facebook account. Yes, I’m blocking as much of your ads and tracking scripts as I can.

For as much as Torsten thinks it would improve discourse to verify identity, I think it’s more important to enable privacy to exist. That’s part of the beauty and joy of the internet, after all. At least, it was in 1992 when I first got online.

Slashdot.org has a really great system for handling moderation. Users have a login and they can choose to associate that login with other identifying information. They can also post anonymously. Other users moderate the comments on a scale from -1 to 5. Users who are consistently moderated up are given a bonus to the scores on their posts. Users who are consistently moderated down are penalized until their default score passes below the normal threshold for viewing. The more interest a comment thread has, the more and better the moderation will be, and it’s all controlled by the users rather than the site’s admins.

That is a model I can live with.

Thanks for the feedback.

I notice that Google Plus is fairly civilized, although I do notice some idiocy in the comments, either snark or people trying to hook up.

Facebook as well seems a nice place to chat… and I’ve seen lots of arguments, but people tend to shake hands afterwards, or at least move on.

Perhaps it is the ability to control who you share information with, who you “friend”. I think part of it is also the identification; you know with whom you are engaging.

But then there ARE sites which have spirited discussions and asshattery is kept to a minimum. Wired.com, for example.

Other sites have shut down their comment threads, like DC Comics. Some cartoonists as well.

I wonder, what happens if an actual site like Yahoo or YouTube adjusts their policy to say they will contact the user’s ISP to report abuse, and, if the ISP’s users cause too many violations, then the ISP itself will be blocked? (A bit like a DCMA warning…)

HEADLINE: “Ghana blocked from internet by rest of world due to scammers, Togo domains proliferate”

The internet has evolved at such an exponentially fast rate that it’s much, much too vast and too useful to employ any kind of system-wide ID check policing. But with that increase in available audience, I’m always surprised at how little personal control bloggers and site administrators employ on their own areas of the internet. If you ran a print magazine, you wouldn’t just publish every letter you receive, nor would you give up entirely because the amount of letters is too much. You would sift through the correspondence, filter it, edit it, and whittle it down into a compelling sample of argument and commentary. It should be the same online.

Most sites regulate comments in some way, either by keeping them in quarantine or by actively reviewing them as they’re posted. Yet of the sites I visit most often, only the NY Times seems to have it down pat, with a user ratings system, an editorial ratings system, AND an active editor who moderates, deletes, and otherwise keeps it moving until they get tired, at which point they close the comments.

Some sites say they don’t want to inhibit the conversation like that and will only monitor for insults or harmful speech, but what does that do for the intelligent discourse some of your viewers may come to your site to enjoy? If trolls run roughshod over your comments with distracting, pointless, badly argued tangents, but in a nice way that doesn’t threaten everybody, what exactly is gained?

The best solution is for site admins to accept their new role as editors-in-chief and use that authority to guide discussion.

I’m a veteran of the Usenet years as well, and sometimes I miss the way those groups seemed to be self-policing. New posters completely lacking in netiquette could be gently pointed in the right direction: it was usually quite civil. But there’s no going back to that, so I’ve definitely become a fan of having a moderator. It’s not always practical to check everything before it’s posted, but you can at least put a stop to bad behavior. And nobody has even mentioned the robot spam (multilevel marketing scams and such) that I see on some boards occasionally. I know the filter on my WordPress blog catches that stuff pretty regularly.