I don’t think anyone here would hesitate to condemn the hardcore comicsgaters who express repugnant racist and sexist views. They are clearly arseholes who act out because they want attention for their own brand of shitbaggery.
But I think problems come when those people committed to calling out this behaviour then start going after their associates, and then associates of associates. How far do the degrees of separation extend for someone to become tainted by this if they’re not affiliated with comicsgate (slightly formless movement as it is) themselves?
King seems to have been motivated by a desire to distance himself from Lee because he thought he was going to be called out for associating with someone who had fairly recently done work with a prominent comicsgater, just because of a variant cover that person did for his Rorschach book.
Even notwithstanding the fact that we now know that Lee doesn’t share or promote those views, is that reasonable? Would it have been a legitimate complaint if Lee had been more aware of comicsgate? Guilt by association for Tom King, just because Jae Lee drew a cover?
Like I say, if that becomes a rule that publishers and creators feel they must follow, and working with arseholes makes you an arsehole, then the comics industry as a whole is pretty screwed, given how often different creators all work on shared books together. Is everyone who has worked with Warren Ellis now persona non grata? And then everyone who works with them? Is DC a “comicsgate” publisher for continuing to employ (say) Kenneth Rocafort? Where does it end?
I feel like it’s a slippery slope, and that creators who are looking for work in an industry that’s suffering at the moment shouldn’t have to investigate the backgrounds of everyone linked to a job offer (which could be as small as drawing a variant cover) for fear of being tarred with the same brush and effectively blackballed.
I get that people are motivated to call out this behaviour for positive reasons, but I think that sometimes these efforts are misguided and the wrong targets are selected.
The intent seems to be to make people scared for their own job security if they agree at any point to work with someone publicly identified as holding these problematic viewpoints, and that seems like a rum business to me.
I get that there’s sometimes an instinctive impulse to take one side or the other in these arguments, but I can’t help but look at both extremes and think it’s a bit of a mess. That’s not to say that both are equally bad, just that both are acting wrongly.
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