So, those interviews went well, I thought! Thank you again to the people who mysteriously agreed to be interviewed. But unfortunately, you're stuck with me again-- that must feel terrible. Imagine wanting to spend time listening to thoughtful, witty people, and then instead getting tormented by some weirdo. I'm sure that the truly good people who work in comics would never allow that to happe--
Jason Latour Alert!
Who is Jason Latour?
Jason Latour is a comic artist, writer and comics-related Youtube vlogger-- most famous for his role in co-creating the character Spider-Gwen in the pages of Marvel comics; the character would later go on to be one of the highlights of the Oscar-winning Into the Spiderverse movie.
But...?
But on June 23, 2020, artist/designer Lauren Tracey posted an account of meeting Latour in 2017 at a comic convention in Leeds:
“He approached me and asked me did I know who he was, and when I said no he asked me did I know any of the titles he worked on, including Spider Gwen. I said I really didn't know who he was and he responded by saying he would give me free comic books if I came to his hotel room with him.”
It is alleged that Latour continued to aggressively hound Ms. Tracey throughout the convention, including by (a) texting her various come-ons, (b) making random disclosures to her that “he was sleeping with a girl in England casually,” (c) persisting in his efforts to monopolize her time even after being told to leave her alone by her friends, and (d) apparently overall ruining this convention and/or possibly comics generally for her:
“When I first arrived at Thought Bubble I was bright eyed and excited to network with people in the industry. When I left, I felt thoroughly disillusioned with comics and decided it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It seemed to be a place where this type of behavior ran rampant, and everybody knew about it but you just had to deal with it. I felt like I had seen behind the scenes of how the comic community actually worked, and there wasn't a place for me there. I dropped my dream of being a comic artist shortly after and fell into a depression while I tried to figure out how I could have my future still be art related. I’ve hardly read a comic since.”
At least two people seemed to corroborate Ms. Tracey's account.
Per the Comics Beat, Latour initially replied to the allegations by "saying he couldn't deny what she said happened because he couldn't remember it, and apologizing for his behavior", before deleting that tweet and instead tweeting an apology for even replying to her, adding "I'm sorry for everything."
On June 23rd, Nic ter Horst also tweeted about how Latour (who she’d previously referred to as “Old Man Comics”) had ruined “my night at Heroes Con, explaining my career to me. Telling me I needed to be meeting editors, etc. So I asked him what I did. He’d never asked.”
Ms. Horst was a “full time animator working towards being an Art Director” who was at the Con socially, and not to “network” with editors.
One of her previous tweets about Latour can also be seen here:
“Still thinking about the time Old Man Comics explained to me that I was wasting my time hanging with my friends.”
There were also stories about Latour being a “creeper” from comics writers Tres Dean and Alex DeCampi. For example, Dean added:
“Unlike most weirdos, Jason has never been quiet about it. He pulled this shit in the Westin lobby, at publisher parties, at the HeroesCon auction, in front of everyone. [...] If you have met Jason Latour even in passing you saw this behavior. And nobody did anything about it[.]”
On June 25, 2020, Bridgit Connell shared her own Jason Latour story about a June 2011 Heroes Con, when outside a hotel lobby, Latour asked Connell to join him in “his car”:
I declined. He asked me again if I would like to go with him to his car. I declined again. I started getting nervous. The group next to me was still deep in conversation, mostly with their backs turned toward us. Jason sat down on the right of me, and talked to me closely about me being attractive.
Then he grabbed my head with both hands, so hard that the best I could do was turn my head to the side so when he tried to make out with me, he missed my mouth and instead kissed my cheek. [...]
Since then, I have made it a mission to warn women at these parties to stay away from Jason while he's drinking. I have warned friends and I have warned strangers. Other than that, in the social circles, I have tried to act like nothing happened. Because these moments are scary, and awkward, and honestly, I hate thinking about them. I want everything to be okay.”
Do People Understand why what Jason Latour did is Wrong?
I'm not sure about other people; but this is the story I most feel my own shame and awkwardness discussing-- this is the one I'm most likely to mess up writing about. (Admitting vulnerability and being self-deprecating-- this should go well, on a constantly hostile internet. Wheee! Enjoy your weaponizing, everybody!) Because I realize that being Some Crappy Dude, there’s a part of my brain that thinks, on hearing this story,
“Boy, I’m glad I didn't have my business put on the street like that! I'm glad people aren't hearing about how I was horny that one time, in 2011.”
Maybe when I hear these stories, I kneejerk focus on The Boy. "That’s how stories work-- the Boy’s the main character! Derpity Derp Derp!"
And it pathetically takes me a moment to think:
“Oohhhh wait, I should be way more glad that (a) I didn’t have to watch a crowd of my industry peers silently watching me fend off Jason Latour while doing nothing to help me, at least allegedly, and (b) I won’t ever have to wonder if I’d face far worse repercussions for complaining about having to deal with that situation, than they ever will for their inaction.”
Most dudes probably have a story about shooting their shot, and getting rejected, and so some might see this story a certain way, as an "Internet is Scary" story, a comics industry variation of the Dongle Joke. But I think when you dig into the details on this one, this ain't exactly "modern romance." I don't know if men should find the "there are free comics in my hotel room" part all that relatable!
(I mean, as a straight man, when I hear that, I do think "Awww hell, that sounds like us straight guys. Get the cuffs-- us straights are it again. Us heteros are heteroin’ it up-- we won’t stop heteroin’, no matter how much people beg us!” It sounds exhaustingly plausible to me, but not exactly relatable).
Comics have a veneer of informality, but this was alleged to have transpired at a work event. It’s called BarCon-- but the post-convention gatherings of convention-goers at bars has been going on for so long that BarCon is its own institution. Younger people are often told to go to BarCon to network and become members of the “comics community”. Freelancers tend to the professional relationships they might rely on at BarCon. If it’s BarCon, people aren’t playing hard to get at The Club-- they’re at work!
And so, if industry peers were quietly watching and doing nothing? Their actions and inactions were signaling whose comfort mattered and whose comfort didn’t, who they valued professionally and who they didn’t.
I don't know if this is a story about "grooming." But in at least one key respect, it’s the same story as the other ones, in that it raises the same question:
Who gets to feel welcome?
Plus: I especially don’t like how oblivious I am to the DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! part.
As a middle-aged failure, I get to laugh off male horniness-- I find my own deeply pathetic, at least, and so a source of tremendous amusement. I think it’s one of the fun parts of getting older, how much you get to make fun of yourself in a brand new way.
“Awww, dummy’s got hormones-- what do you think you’re going to do with those, Rocko?? Who do you think wants to hear about that nonsense?”
-- Me to Myself, Pretty Much Every Day.
But if you were to slowly say to me, “Okay, beyond just the offensive invasion of your bodily autonomy, beyond the social embarrassment and awkwardness and the panic that a social interaction could somehow ricochet and hurt you professionally... Imagine that you’re at a place… where a guy is ignoring Basic Social Cues and disregarding Basic Rules of Conduct… and that person wants to get you alone... where other people aren’t around... by saying 'want some free comics?'”...
I think then I’d finally get it through my thick skull, and say
“Oh, I'm about to be violated and then murdered, maybe not in that order! Got it! Slow on the draw-- I got it-- took me too long, but I get it. I’m to die and become ghostly!”
Was Latour a danger to all of these women? I’m sure his peers would say no, that he was just fucking oblivious, stupid rather than malicious; hopefully they’re right!; I would prefer to to believe that, myself, rather than having to think the worst of everyone, forever.
But if the allegations are true, what has to be recognized as a starting point is probably this: him and potentially his entire community shifted the burden of having to ask the question of whether Latour was dangerous onto the women who were just trying to have fun, who were just trying to relax after a Con, after nasally-guzzling the worst smells known to Mankind, women who had done nothing to deserve any burden but exist.
I should note here the science isn't on men's side generally, when it comes to why men sometimes become sexually aggressive at bars. Per a 2014 study, men's sexual aggressiveness at bars has no relationship with their levels of intoxication: "Men may perceive intoxicated women either as more amenable to advances or as easier targets who are less able to rebuff them because they don't have their wits about them, the researchers say."
Is This Story Just About Jason Latour? Is There More to Think About Here?
First, if there's truth to the allegations, I'm not sure that this is a story about "having a drinking problem" (because Ms. Tracey's account makes clear that she felt uncomfortable "at the convention itself" and not just in a bar environment).
Though of course: if Latour or anyone we have to discuss has a drinking or substance problem, we hope that they find the help they need.
But since BarCon has come up, there's a part of BarCon that I wanted to mention, a part that I definitely don’t understand anymore: publishers let their editors go to BarCon.
Why?
Publishers are paying for editors to attend conventions, presumably-- hotel rooms, travel expenses, etc. And BarCon is transparently a work event-- it's not off duty time if they're representing the company. So: DC, Marvel, Dark Horse-- is there nothing they can do to keep their editors from going? And after the first time DC heard about a possible near-date rape allegedly happening at one… Didn’t they have an obligation to find a way to discourage attendance? (Example: even if it's debatable whether the law allows the publishers to forbid attendance, couldn't they reward non-attendance?)
No one needs a BarCon to find talent-- there’s an internet! Instagram! Snapchat! Lemon Party! There’s talent everywhere (except Delaware)-- you shouldn’t need to go to a hotel bar sausage party to find someone who can draw a Batman! Whatever meager “function” BarCon serves is far outweighed by the risks of harassment, assault, etc., as well as just the damage it might cause to “comic culture”, careers, reputations, etc.
And if nothing else, “being a good hang at a bar” seems like a weird job requirement for “drawings on paper stapled together.” Maybe the pleasure-seeking of comic book editors isn’t worth the risks or harms.
Look: I know that BarCon in and of itself is meaningless. But I think it’s a helpful example of a Bigger Issue: the entire fucking industry is a BarCon.
“A clubhouse of barely tolerable people, whose socializing formed a community of winners and victims.” I’ve been to that bar! You just described the Warren Ellis Forum and the Saddle Ranch! At least the Saddle Ranch had a mechanical bull and not just comics’ homegrown variety.
Comics are a barely-professionalized run-like-a-clubhouse industry… owned by the biggest entertainment conglomerates on Planet Earth.
...Why?
Second: as mentioned before, Latour has this Youtube show where he talks to comic creators, and for that show, he talked to women in comics occasionally-- a Becky Cloonan or a Mariko Tamaki. The reasons Latour wouldn't be running hogwild and being inappropriate to Cloonan and Tamaki-- that seems fairly obvious, but what it brings to mind...
Some women get to be interviewed by Latour; others allegedly don’t get to be treated so equally. Some women famously got to be esteemed colleagues of Warren Ellis; other women allegedly had Warren Ellis saying “would you like to see a video of me rolling around on cars with my shirt off-- have you ever wondered what it'd look like if Tawny Kitaen starred in a Whitesnake video shortly after drowning to death?”
I’m not 100% sure what to say about that bit-- usually, I don’t ever think about how those lines get drawn, as just some lame guy. But wild guess: if I were a lady, I bet that’s some shit I’d think about all the goddamn time.
Third, a thing that fascinates me as a Beloved Man O’ The Internet: Jason Latour didn’t randomly get in trouble; this all came up after he made a Grand Statement about Cameron Stewart:
Many of the people here, especially the women, want to feel like their time invested in this space is rewarding. Sometimes they are looking for love or intimacy or even casual sex out of it. [..] As men we have to work harder to understand that even saying YES is not always the same thing as understanding what YES means. I have been in situations where I thought the ground was level and failed to realize that in this field-- level has a different definition.
Like an Instagram influencer at a protest, he got himself in trouble for trying to take a selfie in front of mistreated women.
A pretty weird selfie that responds to the allegations that Cameron Stewart was grooming underage girls by awkwardly bringing up "casual sex" and suggesting that the lesson of the Cameron Stewart situation was that men should turn down having sex with the casual-sex-seeking women crowding comic conventions desperate for inker-dick (???).
How much am I taking an unearned selfie, too? (Ruh-roh)
What motivates that? How much of this kind of showing off is inherent to social media's hedonic treadmill? How much does Twitter generally reward the Lone Ranger act, such that even people who have no particular claim to fitness let alone virtue can still hear that Theme Song in the back of their head-- still think they can just jump on a horse and ride?
Oh but not you-- you’re the exception!
Controversy! The Comic Book Business Reacts!
CORRECTION: There was some confusion about tweets previously quoted in this section, as part of a discussion of whether when discussing situations, the specific names of the people being discussed should be mentioned. A closer examination of the timing suggests that those tweets were made before June 23rd and thus reacting to other situations. We have removed that discussion, for that reason.
On June 25th, Ms. Tracey noted her reaction to the response from the comics community:
It's a bit disheartening seeing some of my favourite male comic artists not getting involved in the discussion around predatory behavior in the comics community right now. It makes me wonder why not? I've seen some people say actions speak louder than words, and maybe we will see it in their actions going forward instead. But I do think it's a bit odd not to show at least some support online considering what's going on right now.
Enter: Erik Larsen, stage right.
At first I thought he assumed that he was one of Ms. Tracey's "favourite male comic artists" (Savage Dragon #228 had a lot of fans!), but I think it's that a fan specifically (and delightfully) insisted that they wanted to hear Erik Larsen weigh in. And so, while acknowledging that "you can never string the right words in the right order to satisfy everybody" (...co-signed!), Larsen began tweeting a lengthy response to Ms. Tracey, making a dramatic and helpful statement that cleared things up:
Honestly, I haven't seen or heard anything recent outside of Twitter. I've heard about old-timers like Julius Schwartz in a very general way-out nothing specific. Beyond that--nothing. So there really hasn't been anything for me to weigh in on.
I know, for a lot of creators, conventions are the highlight of their social lives. When they're at home they're squirreled away in their studios making comics and conventions are a place to hang out with other creators and socialize.
There are groupies who go to cons the same way that there are groupies who attend rock concerts, and for much the same reason. There was a particular ex-wife of a creator who seemed determined to go to bed with as many other professionals as she could possibly manage. And certainly, for many people--the prospect of hooking up with a creator and being able to travel the world and be part of that lifestyle can be quite alluring. There are a lot of relationships formed at conventions.
Now, that's not me. For me--conventions are part of my work life and while I do stay up to the wee hours chewing the fat about comics--I'm not chasing skirts. I've been happily married for a number of years now and I've tried to follow the advice: "don't shit where you eat."
I think it's easy to look at a short list and conclude that EVERYBODY is going wild but it's SUCH a small percentage as far as I can see. There are thousands of creators in the field and I'm hearing on Twitter about a handful, many of whom, I haven't even met.
Boy, this Latour situation is a tricky one to write about. But just as was true for Savage Dragon #228, Larsen tackled the Latour situation in a heartfelt and sensitive way, by saying the one thing that needed to be said in this moment:
"Comic Book Groupies: Erik Larsen isn't going to sex you. He's saving that juicy dick for his wife."
Uhh, Quick question: Why do men who work in comics keep going wildly out of their way to fucking mention comic convention groupies??? What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Like, how is that any kind of logical or appropriate thing to say in response to hearing women saying "please don't ruin conventions for women by pestering them incessantly" or "don't groom underage girls" or "don't mistreat 60+ women"?? Why are these guys interjecting that you can get blown at Emerald City for having drawn Nightwing's buttocks professionally into these conversations? Help, I don't understand people!
On July 31, 2020, the Hollywood Reporter published "Comic Book Industry Reckons With Abuse Claims" which mentions that "Marvel sources tell THR that the company has no plans with the creator." However, the import of this is a little fuzzy since Latour had tweeted that his last issue on Spider-Gwen was in July 2018. I had thought of Latour recently as being an Image creator more than a Marvel creator, perhaps incorrectly.
But again: maybe I’m being unfair! Can we say that comic pros looking the other way for Latour evidences any deeper issue or deeper dysfu--
ROBBI RODRIGUEZ ALERT!
MYKE COLE ALERT!
DANIEL KRALL ALERT
SCOTT LOBDELL ALERT
--uuuuck.
After the Latour story, the “floodgates” opened, with other women making allegations of mistreatment:
ONE: Comic artist Cara McGee tweeted that Robbi Rodriguez (the other Spider-Gwen co-creator) had invited her and one of her best friends to his hotel room for a threesome, which she found upsetting as she saw it as Rodriguez “treating girls like trash. It's just....so discouraging to know that some guys in the industry will always just look at you as a sexual object and not as a professional peer, or even just as a FRIEND.”
A twitter user Courtney also claimed that she’d had negative interactions with Rodriguez, including at a 2015 NYCC, and that she had texted Jason Latour about those interactions. One tweet from Courtney that I’d recommend for your attention is her response to Ms. Tracey’s story about Jason Latour:
Honestly from the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry you had to go through this. I will say there's a lot of snake men in comics commenting on this tweet that are FULLY aware he did this and are feigning shock at your experience, and to them I say Fuck Y'all.
TWO: There is a writer named Myke Cole who works primarily in fantasy and science fiction novels. And Myke Cole was accused of sexual harassment-- and of course, once the comic industry found out, there was no place for him in it. Cancel culture strikes again!
*Checks notes* Oh wait, I wrote that wrong. Myke Cole was accused of sexual harassment in 2018, and then published a February 14, 2018 blog post entitled “When you make a mistake you have to own it” (Happy Valentine’s Day!). Cole:
In the coming weeks and months and years, I will do everything I can do be part of making our community a safe and welcoming space for *everyone*.
Myke Cole was never “cancelled”-- after Cole "owned" his mistakes, Vault Comics promoted Cole's upcoming comics with a Hollywood Reporter story. But unfortunately for Vault and poor Hollywood, Cara McGee alleged that Myke Cole’s way of making his community a “welcoming place for *everyone*” was “trying to pull me onto his lap, and [telling] me he wanted to piss on me.”
Game designer Kate Welch tweeted on the 25th that she had dated Cole; that after his “weak-ass apology”, “the only way he has changed his behavior is by becoming viciously obsessed with his Me Too moment”, that he “dropped the n-word TWICE within seconds of meeting my best friends for the first time” and said “is that bad??” when confronted, and that he made vomiting noises in response to a trans woman’s photographs, concluding “Myke Cole is a rabid asshole in a tight feminist shirt hoping we don’t look past it.”
Importantly, Welch also added the following:
He also strictly forbade me to fart around him. Like, threatened to dump me if it happened. I wish this was a joke. I wish I’d done it anyway. Fill that asshole’s head with my assholes’s music.
THREE: Some comic fans might remember illustrator and Maryland Institute College of Art professor Daniel Krall (not to be confused with animation and illustration’s Dan Krall) for his work on certain Oni Comics and supposedly forthcoming work.
But others might remember Daniel Krall for allegedly being “exceedingly cruel and vicious.”
Those were the words of longtime Cameron Stewart collaborator Babs Tarr when describing how Krall “broke my heart many times”, after entering into a relationship with Krall when he’d been one of her teachers (and 11 years her senior). Tarr added that Krall “does not respect students who aren’t cis”, “lacks the ability to truly empathize with any of the people that he’s harmed” and that hers was “just one of many stories.”
Tarr was possibly responding to an earlier tweet by a former assistant of Krall’s, which made allegations about her relationship with Krall while the two worked together on forthcoming comics. After detailing their relationship and its end, the assistant claimed, among other things, that Krall “continued to go out of his way to damage” her career.
The assistant had told her story two years ago in an e-mail sent to MICA’s Human Resources department, which purportedly did nothing in response. But once posted on Twitter, her account encouraged other former students to discuss their numerous concerns about Krall, including cartoonist Sam Bosma. Krall issued an apology, and then resigned from MICA… which again, might not have done enough and/or anything with a HR complaint for two years... perhaps maybe endangering countless students for two years, without any apparent explanation?
Tuition at MICA is $49,720 per academic year, and MICA supposedly has 1,714 undergrads enrolled. I'm not great at math, but I think that means MICA collects roughly $85 million dollars in tuition a year… money which it might have just spent on exposing young adults to predators.
I think I can do better. My counter-offer is that if you pay me only $42.5 million dollars a year-- just half of what MICA collected, a bargain-- I will write an essay about comic books that will traumatize just as many young people! Change that you can believe in!
It's also especially important that we pause to again quote Kate Welch, specifically the part where she said "Fill that asshole's head with my asshole's music."
So: creepers in comics-- creeping on those trying to break in, creeping on those who have broken in, creeping on online fans, creeping on con-goers, and even creeping on kids trying to get an education in comics! .
Which means...
FOUR: Bases! Are! Loaded!
Who can bring us home? Who can bring all the runners on base home? What comic publisher is always there for us in our hour of need, when we need to hear a story about comics being sexually hostile?
You know who!
The crowd is already jumping to their feet, already going crazy!
Madness, the entire stadium, losing their minds!
Have you heard about someone in comics being sexually creepy?
DC Comics: Now and Forev--
Awwwfuck: after the paragraphs above were written, things have gotten pretty dark at DC Comics.
A great many people have lost their jobs; entire departments are being shut down; this is a time of great uncertainty and despair for a lot of people out there; and of course, one wonders if this is a prelude to worse days ahead.
Which makes it awkward that in order to be comprehensive in this round-up, we are still required to talk about one of DC's star writers, Scott Lobdell. Again.
As a star comic book writer, Scott Lobdell must have held himself to a high standard of behavior, right?
Well, in 2013, it was revealed that Scott Lobdell had appeared on a LGBTQ in Comics panel (even though he's a heterosexual man) and allegedly sexually harassed a bisexual cartoonist while on the panel. He apologized after the panel... to her husband.
When this incident was discussed later online (without identifying Lobdell), Lobdell volunteered that the story was about him, admitted certain parts of the allegations, claimed he had made a “failed attempt at humor” and again apologized. The apology was immediately accepted… by the Comics Beat which stated that it “respected Scott for getting out in front of this”, adding "this apology doesn’t right all the wrongs that we’ve been talking about but…we’re moving to the next level."
This was allegedly a correct statement-- Scott Lobdell allegedly took it to the Next Level with women repeatedly thereafter!
Three years later, in 2016 (per a Bleeding Cool report from 2019), a blog was posted where a married female comic creator (writing under a pseudonym) described spending time at a con where an individual was present who Bleeding Cool believed to “clearly” be Lobdell based on the blog's details-- the "Lobdell" character allegedly (a) hit on the author after she told him she was married, (b) began texting her photos he’d secretly taken of her from behind, (c) interrupted her dinner with friends to be creepy, and (d) gave her the impression that he was “hanging [future] work over [her] head.”
That article seems pro-Lobdell but even that article reported a 2018 tweet from comics writer Alex de Campi describing industry gossip that senior DC staff might know that Lobdell was harassing women in comics, but doing nothing.
What new allegations were made in Summer 2020?
On June 30, 2020, Tess Fowler tweeted that Scott Lobdell had asked her to “go to a foreign con with him so he could tie me up & abuse me”. She then reprinted Facebook messages she’d sent in 2013 which stated “This is a guy who tried to coerce me into going to Mexico with him so he could handcuff me in his hotel room.”
Comics creators Alex de Campi, Chad Michael Ward, and Sina Grace added their own stories and/or observations about Lobdell.
One person responding to Ms. Fowler further alleged that
“[Lobdell] came to a hotel I was working at once and was super creepy to my coworker. ‘Don’t you know who I am? I write comics.’ [...] On his walk to his room, he found her Instagram, went about 4 years back and commented on a picture of her feet.”
Controversy! The Comic Book Business Reacts!
In April 2020, DC had announced that Lobdell’s DC Title Red Hood and the Outlaws was “concluding” with issue 50. On June 30, 2020, Lobdell posted to Instagram that he was “profoundly grateful for the last ten years on a book telling the story of a tragically flawed man in search of redemption.”
But Lobdell’s collaborators at Scout Comics, at least, issued a statement that “we take every single allegation against our creators seriously”, which was interesting considering the allegations about Lobdell stretch back seven years and are pretty easy to find out… as are the allegations concerning Lobdell’s co-creator on a Scout comic, Roc Upchurch.
You might remember Roc Upchurch from (a) his 2014 arrest on domestic abuse charges after “allegedly beating his ex-wife” (charges were later dropped), (b) his ex-wife’s letter to you, you the person reading this from November 2015 (“Dear Comics New Sites/Publishers/Creators and most of all Fans: Roc Upchurch is the monster that haunts our nightmares. Mine and my children's. And now he's yours too. You let him back in by the front door”), or (c) an absolutely delightful August 2015 Comicbook Resources interview with Upchurch following his domestic violence arrest and its hard-hitting 5-out-of-5-star questions in the Mighty CBR Tradition-- e.g., “Are you doing okay?”, What are you doing to get things back on track, to pick yourself back up?”, and one of my personal all-time favorite comic book interview questions, considering the horrific context:
“In comics, there is a level of interaction with fans that's very personal. They see creators at conventions, on social media -- it's much more interactive than other industries, where there can be more of a wall between creators and fans. When it came to pulling back from work and taking time away, do you feel like that's something you wouldn't have done in a different industry?”
I think the timing is also curious that Lobdell’s departure from DC is about 4-5 months after Dan Didio’s departure from DC. It’d be nice if anyone could have looked into that all that, but I don't know if anyone has “looked into all that” with DC Comics since Buzzfeed in 2017. Perhaps that will change now (though with the media having its own hard economic times, maybe that too seems unlikely...).
This is probably the wrong time to be saying anything about DC Comics, though, e.g. discussing our theories as to why Lobdell was at DC for so long despite these incidents, and/or how his long tenure is difficult to reconcile with how others were ejected from DC for far less. It's probably best that we just wish those who have lost work and are now struggling the very best of luck.
Sure, there were some bad apples at DC, but not everybody who worked for DC could have been a bad app--
GEOFF JOHNS ALERT
WHAT? No! Wrong time! Wrong time!
The DC news adds even more awkwardness to all of this-- everything everywhere's just not headed in the right direction, huh?! This whole "let's live on a planet" thing-- not feeling great lately!
But...
We gotta finish this story that we've started! We gotta keep going for the kids! And their kids! I don’t know why kids are having kids-- 2020’s been a very upsetting year! We gotta keep going for all the fans of the Comics Journal-- his name is Gerald, and he does not have access to Twitter. We gotta keep movin'! Out of Spite!
TO BE CONTINUED ON WEDNESDAY.
ALSO: It's important that we again quote Kate Welch, specifically the part where she said "Fill that asshole's head with my asshole's music."
