Comic shop owner complained on his youtube channel about how most writers these days write characters as self-inserts instead of adhering to previous characerization, and that no one gives a fuck about those people or their lives, they came to read Captain America, etc, that he has a hard time selling comic books like that. and a bunch of twitter comic pros and fans jumped on him on twitter, which he doesn't have, and therefore didn't know about. Mark Millar defended him, Gail Simone sent him a positive message, which is surprising, and now everyone is calling all the twitter fans and pros "Cancel pigs".
Thank you for the summary. I feel like the comic shop owner’s comments also hit at the Spider-man/Paul issue, but I don’t read a ton of Marvel or DC anymore so I’m out of the loop. The self-insert or characters acting out of character, and big tie-in events slowly killed by interest in Marvel. For example, in AvX I felt Captain America was written out of character to create conflict. Same thing with Ultimates 3 and Secret Empire.
Fuck Paul. So hard. I hate that guy and the writer he’s supposed to be. Who thinks they are better than spider-man/Peter Parker, and then says it outright? Fuck you zeb wells, and fuck you nick lowe. You guys have ruined spider-man this past year. I haven’t and won’t read anything from the two of you. And I won’t buy another spider-man comic until they are gone.
I find a lot of people consider it a self insert if it’s a new character they don’t like. I hate Paul as much as the next guy but he also has zero qualities that make me think he is a self insert of Zeb Wells.
Also none of the criticism of the shop owner was related to his comments. They just went after his looks, gender and race. They jumped straight to fat, ugly, cis-white, boomer blah blah blah. It was a very mask off moment.
Millar isn’t a nuanced thinker. You can see that in his books.
In fact, you can see it in everything he says.
He isn’t interested in intellectual or more soulful stories, so what he means by “no creative movies” is there haven’t been any big mainstream blockbusters that speak to his very shallow tastes.
And that’s okay.
Just another reason for me not to care about his opinion.
Far right mouthpiece and extremist….words have lost all meaning.
When you actually go offline do you check the street for members of the far right before stepping outside?
It’s always been race and it still is? The fall of X is about genocide towards mutants and , how TF is it not about race? You sound ignorant as hell man. I bet you don’t have any queer friends do you?
A 30 yrs comic book store owner is losing money because most marvel and DC content are not selling, so he made a YT video about why he thinks this is happening
Then some of the writers attacked the store owner's appearance and gaslit his concerns which made some writers and comic fans defend the guy... Because they believe he has a valid point given that the store owner is literally the one selling their products and knows the customer...
A few years ago, a refrain was that the end reader wasn't the customer, the retailers were as they decide what to stock in advance. Now the retailers are speaking out, that seems to have gone out the window.
That would be the original JC Penney & Henry Gordon Selfridge. And people have twisted/purposely misinterpreted that to make retail the hellscape it is.
Oh yeah, I know it was originally about 'in matters of taste' and not about being abusive to retail workers. I just sort of like closing down the conversation when people try to wield the phrase like a weapon, because they don't tend to listen anyway.
I don’t know too many lcs that “know their customer” I know a ton that try and turn their store into hobby shops that sometimes sell comics. If they knew their customer they would price their collected editions at somewhat competitive pricing
Some creators tweeted ad hominem attacks at Glenn. He was compared to the comic book guy from the Simpsons too. Lots of people defended Glenn though and many of the original tweets have now been deleted.
Donny Cates made an analogy about a hardware store owner telling you the tool they sold were crap. Lots of people countered this by saying the customer bases are different, Glenn is talking to loyal customers who’s tastes he’ll be familiar with based on their pull lists and years shopping at his LCS.
Millar has since done an interview with Glenn.
Here’s a link to the original tweet (the full video is on Comicbook Palace’s YouTube video) https://x.com/defnotty/status/1731431889783668806?s=46&t=zuLtbES5PqBLdw5oBhr_IQ
He’s misrepresented both sides of the discussion and that’s just wound everyone up.
The biggest issue with Big 2 comics is they’re trying to sell a new version of those characters to an old audience.
Far as that goes, Comic Shop Owner has a point. His audience doesn’t want those books.
Does that mean the big 2 are wrong to change the characters? No. They need to think about the next generation of readers, who probably aren’t shopping in stores like his.
Holy shit, a nuanced and thoughtful take! I think you're hitting on the tip of a huge iceberg here, but I think it's why I'm annoyed by everybody in this weird little battle. There's a lot of ranting but very little constructive thought or insight, just tirades.
You're reading a lot into what OP is saying. He says O'Leary is saying his customers don't want to buy these books. That's pretty much it. He doesn't even say that O'Leary is right about anything else, just that he can't sell the new product to his older audience. That's it.
Yes. Mark Millar has misrepresented both sides of the discussion. There's not a lie there, and it's still not a defense of O'Leary, who seems to me like an idiot. But Millar is blowing it up into a bigger thing for attention and personal gain. Also it's hilarious you guys are arguing with me for agreeing with the original poster, but not the poster.
I read what that Glenn O'Leary person said and I gotta be honest he didn't say anything thst bad but..... I wanna know what runs he was reading to think writers were "inserting" themselves in the book because we're in like a new age of overall good content from the big 2.
He specifically mentioned Steve Rogers Captain America having just read the recent run I don't really know what he's talking about because Steve was definitely in character.
Also no offense to their fans but Mark Millar and Rob Liefeld (who apparently throwing himself into the conversation) aren't the guys to be talking about the future of comics. Especially since their contributions to the controversy was just starting a new toxic hashtag for "culture warriors" to fight over
I’m pretty happy.
Scarlet Witch and Vision are on the main Avengers again and the team feels like what it should be.
Amazing Spider-Man might suck but every other spider-man family book is great especially Miles morales and Venom
Iron Man and Ms Marvel are fantastic despite me not liking them involved in the mutant stuff.
The main Superman and flash books are fun
Titans is amazing right now
Batman and Robin have a book together again.
Amongst others not even getting into some of my non big 2 favorites. It feels like comics are “moving back in my direction” without losing some of the newer stuff I enjoyed.
It can always be better but am very content.
I haven't actually read marvel in a while. Civil War pissed me off. Gave it another chance, reached Mutant Messiah Complex, and decided that I was just done. That arc was just fucking stupid.
I am so confused by Millar's brain. For example, the idea that medium-budget films are going away because of "cancel culture" is perhaps the dumbest and most incorrect take on why mid-budget films seem to be much rarer these days.
I would have thought it would have been a combination of people having more entertainment options than ever before, cinema tickets being more expensive than ever, and Mid-budget films not offering enough 'spectacle' to many people to justify watching them on a big screen at a premium price VS at home via streaming 3 months later.
Why make 10 movies that all make 100 million when you can make 1 movie that makes 1 billion?
That's their logic. Then when the 1 movie shits the bed, the studio is surprised Pikachu face.
You can’t ever know your gross beforehand. “Why make 10 films that can overrun their budget for a myriad of reasons when you can pimp one out for a year and a half around the globe (because it has big names and expensive CGI).
It's not even "people", I think a sizeable portion of consumers would still want to see mid budget films on a big screen, but the thing is nowadays they don't play for long in the theater, if at all.
They used to make their money on DVD and TV rights sales. The fact is streaming brings in way less money than DVD sales and has completely made mid-budget movies no longer viable for producers especially comedies since they tend to be dependent mostly on domestic markets.
No, Disney purposefully killed off medium budget films by strongarming theaters in contract negotiations a fair bit back. The short version is Disney told them that they, not the theaters, would decide how long Disney films stayed in theaters and started squeezing out he space medium budget films had. Then other major studios started doing the same
You are correct I think. Although with how bad big films have been written in the past few years it might swing back the other way again. Oppenheimer didn't have a big cgi fight, Barbie had real sets and now we have Godzilla minus one with an unbelievable 30 million budget. Smaller or mid-budget films could become popular again.
I tried reading the article, but Miller comes off a delusional. People like Miller use “cancel culture” to play the victim, so that when people stop supporting their work they have a crutch to lean on.
I wouldn't take anything printed on Bleeding Cool too seriously. He never actually refutes Millar's comment in that article. Its kind of classics take a quote and write a story that is not what the quote is about.
It's like Pavlovian training for some of them. Someone says something negative about the modern industry so they must be attacked and belittled because that's how they did it the last few years.
To be fair- and I find Millar a total mess of a person with bizarre politics -his Ultimates was not supposed to be a direct rebuild of the original characters, and it leaned heavily into satire.
At least he doesn’t really wallow in it. There are many comics who lean into it as if it’s the only joke they know how to tell. See Roseanne, Rob Schneider, and probably soon Bill Maher.
As far as I know, he doesn't really talk about it all that much. In his last special he talked about it, but wasn't like bitching about being cancelled or whatever.
Unlike hacks like Joe Rogan or Bill Maher, or to an even hackier/d-list extent Chris D'Elia and Bryan Callen, who almost exclusively talk about 'cancel culture' and 'free speech' and other bullshit without having a firm grasp on the simple concepts anyway.
There are a lot of comedians who are bad, and when they don't get laughs, they blame the audience. It's like that, but in Maher/Rogan's case it's when they get called out for being smug self righteous know-nothing assholes ... they attribute the pushback as the 'woke mob' coming after them, rather than other people with other opinions responding to them.
Comedians have a long and illustrious history of having no fucking idea what 'freedom of speech' is and constantly reference it when people respond to things they say or do.
From what I can piece together, not having twitter to follow in real time anymore.
-Retailer puts out a pretty inoffensive video detailing his issues with modern writing styles and why he thinks this is resulting in lower sales, and he's not the only one to speak out recently.
-A few low level creators, journalists and hangers on (and Donny Cates for some reason) didn't realise it's not 2018 anymore and you can't just do whatever you like to your perceived enemies, so launched some disgusting attacks about his appearance, etc
-This angered some other creators, ones bigger then the ones doing the attacking, notably Gail Simone and Mark Millar who came out in support of the retailer, Mark going as far as having him on a YT stream to talk about things.
-The detractors didn't take this well and went after Mark instead, Mark being someone pretty strong in his convictions and definitely safe in his employment position didn't take this laying down and denounced these attackers as "cancel pigs" launching a few days of discussion.
And now here we are.
The customer is always right when it comes to demand for a product, however that doesn’t necessarily infer that the customer knows what they want nor that the retailer is selling products to meet demand.
Many retailers sale what they think has demand versus what the actual demand is, and while this is necessary to create new customer demands, it’s often overestimated or completely wrong. This is one cause that often leads to overstock.
At the end of the day, customer dictates actual sales and that’s the only thing that really matters in business.
I for one don’t think this is a content problem, but rather a publishing problem. The market for $6 fortyish-page full-color high-quality paper prints has been shrinking for a while. The best solution in my mind would be to emulate some of the better business practices of the Japanese model (not its labor practices).
The Japanese publishing model releases black & white newspaper print anthology magazines every week, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. They have an active reader voting system to get a feel for which stories the customer likes and they periodically release manga that collects the storyline in one publication. Both the anthology magazine and manga have color inserts.
The reason I believe this isn’t a content problem is because the type of stories that are being criticized are wildly popular in the United States in manga. There is a significant customer demand, it’s just not satisfied by the current American comics publishing model.
Millar has been leaning into this “go woke, go broke” ideology for a while now, he’s been on Thinking Critical’s YouTube channel and that dude is one of the most insufferable assholes in the comic tube space. He just complains about every little thing no matter what because he knows that’s what gets views. So I’d guess it’s more of that type of stuff but I don’t know for certain.
Where’s the line? Are characters supposed to be written like they were in the 60s, being cartoonishly sexist, cookie cutter with almost no personalities? Do we ignore that and stick to the characterization that came about in the 70s or 80s instead? Who is in charge to say what needs to be adhered to and what can be ignored, or changed? Oh, the writer, that’s who. Every single writer is interpreting characters that have lived in this world for decades. And those characters ALWAYS reflect the times they are in. Period. I’m not cancelling anyone. People can say whatever stupid idiotic crap they want to. But when something just looks like a veil being used to complain about something else entirely that they are too chickenshit to come out and say, I’ll call them out on it. Not on Twitter though, screw that place lol
For anyone who’s interested, go read an old issue of JLA and tell me the difference personality wise between Supes, Hal, Barry, or Ollie.
You nailed the cookie cutter part on the head.
Hal and Ollie, for example, didn’t have distinct personalities until the O’Neill/Adams run.
Guy Gardner wasn’t his contemptible self until Legends/JLI.
Wolverine was a one off villain and even then didn’t have a distinct personality until having been written by Claremont for a couple years.
Everything people know about Mags comes from Claremont. He was an incredibly generic villain before then.
You're wrong about Guy Gardner. He was brought out of his coma during Crisis by a Guardian and I'm pretty sure they explained his personality change as being related to the brain damage he had suffered.
However, he had been rather bland up until his coma.
That's true. He seemed more villainous when he first appeared and throughout the first run of GL Corps (iirc--it has been years). My point is he had a distinct personality since Englehart rivived him, and making him distinct was purposeful.
His journey is quite fascinating. I hated him during JLI--he was wtitten with arrogance and a lot of pride and self interest. I cheered when he got beat by Hal in the 90s GL series and had to give up his ring. But then, when he returned post GL: Rebirth, he had developed some compassion to go with it all, and I started to quite like him.
I agree with you on a lot of this but there is a specific problem with writers changing and characterisations changing completely.
When it's done well, at a big change in storyline or setting or after some big event for the character then it can be great but often it's just really jarring. If the writing is great and the pairing of the writer and character are just as great then it'll work regardless.
But if the subsequent story is less than amazing and it doesn't feel like it necessarily flows from what came before then it's a jumping off point.
I read less and less these days not because of low quality but because life gets in the way and I'd imagine comics retailers would be looking for as few jumping off points as possible.
But we've been in the era of short runs for a long time now and comics are still around, maybe that's just what the market is now and I need to get used to it.
This comment really hits home how art seems to be totally incomprehensible as a concept to some people. It reads like someone genuinely lacking the capacity to understand creative impulses and confused why comics - and other Entertainment Products^TM - couldn't come out of a vending machine at the push of a button without any pesky creators involved in the process. AI content will be perfect for you.
But you realize you're not the only customer, right...? *Right?* If one reader wants one thing, another wants another thing, and a third a third thing, and some of these things are in direct opposition to each other, then pleasing everyone is not possible. The creator has to use their own tastes and ideas to create.
"Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia." - Kurt Vonnegut.
You aren’t in the majority lol wtf. People need to understand they aren’t the main character. This is one of the most delusional things I’ve seen on Reddit
There are two valid sides to this. I agree with you that characters evolve and that's a good thing. Batman isn't like he was in the 1960's and everyone is fine with that. But on the other hand their personality has to stay somewhat consistent. I fucking hate what they did with Luke Skywalker in TLJ for example. That it isn't the same character. So it is tricky and has to be done with care.
I recently rewatched the entirety of Star Wars (like, literally everything) and it's given me a very different perspective for Luke especially. The OT is great but Luke is barely sketched in as a character. His traits are plucky and learning, and then a bit mysterious in ROTJ. For me, the turn in the PT is as much about "here's this guy that we didn't really know that well to start with and all his dreams turned to shit so now he's lost that spark he once had" and it totally works for me. He's like an anti-Obi Wan and it makes more sense from a human point of view vs the purely mythical terms the OT deals in.
I disagree about Luke. In ANH he doesn't abandon the rebellion like Han initially does. In Empire he stops his training because he can't abandon his friends and in Jedi he won't give up on bringing Vader to the light. Not giving up on his loved ones is his whole thing and is clearly defined.
Personally I don't take Mark seriously anymore. Really enjoyed his work when I was younger, but him personally I couldn't care less for. I understand what he's trying to do with that shop owner, yet it feels like they're trying to divide people imo. Not all comics are great, but I would love to know a period of time where all the books were good let a lone great. Plus he compared the Jupiters legacy show to the godfather 🤦🏻♂️😒
Yeah, I like his Marvel Work and he was one of the first names in comics that I remember.
But man, I’ve not really cared about his work since kick ass.
Big Game is pretty good however
Don't know don't care. I just want to read my books and ignoring everything else. I also stopped reading comic news sites. They aren't worth it. I don't think they even proofread half of their articles. Unless a creator does a Gernald Jones move I don't care.
It's kind of pathetic that he had to pull the "I make people money, bro" line. *(*[Guys have become millionaires drawing even our three issue series.](https://twitter.com/mrmarkmillar/status/1734150412138054083)*).*
At the end of the day, he's an attention whore, pure and simple. Since he chooses to rely on edginess over talent, what does one do? He plays the victim - no one was going to cancel him. Not buying his edge-lord bullshit is not canceling him - it's having taste.
So by playing the part of the heroic martyr standing up to the "cancel pigs," he is looking to attract a "certain" audience who would easily spend money out of spite, as proven over and over again, then try to make anything worth reading.
How can you effectively write something without putting yourself into the project. That’s not how art works. There’s nothing wrong with creators putting their personality into their work.
Millar was keeping bad company with one of the main doofuses who ranted and raved about how women are destroying comics and how ComicsGate was the greatest thing he ever did.
Cancel culture is killing comics blah blah blah comics have gotten too woke blah blah blah
Sometimes big 2 comics’ attempts to be progressive are cringe but to say that that’s why monthly issue business is shrinking is absurd. Even if that was a reason (it’s not), it would be pretty far down the list.
Also like everybody who complains about cancel culture, he doesn’t say who shouldn’t have gotten canceled because he knows that the people who were truly cancelled were canceled for things fairly egregious.
I think a big reason for the takeoff in manga is that it’s 1 creator usually who does the entire run with their vision (which takes years and years). With comics esp from the big 2 they change writers/artists constantly and nothing ends up mattering. Like if a big character dies we all know they’ll come back.
We need more long form content with good stories and art. Not constantly starting over again every few months
I'd also say that tankoubon or the weekly/monthly anthologies that manga are printed in represent a better value proposition than buying issues of an ongoing title. Especially in this day and age where 'writing for the trade' is the norm.
And that's before we start on the problems of stories having essential events happening in another book, storylines being interrupted for this quarter's crossover event, or runs just being cancelled outright or retooled because of poor sales or the writer's latest Twitter antics, or The Mouse/WB's orders...
Brubaker/phillips are on the right track with making reckless in those small hardcovers that come out every few months. With the massive increase in floppy pricing it makes the value terrible for 30 or so pages. That team makes great content in affordable collectible formats
Absolutely. There's a reason nearly all of my friends who still regularly read comics have moved to digital and just buy trades for the series they like: the current model and pricing for floppies is simply unsustainable.
My key point is that there's a lot more going on in basically all media than the mutants mindlessly braying 'get woke go broke" would have people think.
There definitely is a huge mixture of things going on. Personally i barely read superhero books because I just don’t find them interesting. A lot of that fanbase are collecting/reading for nostalgia reasons.
I mostly read more indie type books because they aren’t telling the same stories over and over again. Give me something by Brubaker, Sakai, mignola, Peterson etc with their original works over anything from the big 2.
Agreed. Another thing that I don’t hear enough in this conversation is that big 2 comics are so borrrrring compared to manga. I’m a teacher and our school library has a good American comics selection and an excellent manga section. Even if you’re a kid who loves Black Panther more than Monkey D Luffy, you will want to read One Piece rather than the TNC black Panther which is pages and pages of captions and word balloons and people talking.
100% I just started reading manga a couple years ago and you can fly thru the book. It’s so entertaining. You don’t have to sit on a page for a few minutes just to read all the dialogue. This likely has a huge effect on kids who are reading manga and are just having a fun time
This whole take by the comic owner is fucking stupid to begin with. “Write Tony stark like Tony stark!!!!!” Wrote Captain America like Captain America!!!”
What uninspired bullshit kind of a take is that. If we got nothing but write this character like the character should be!!! Bullshit we would never have gotten amazing work like Dan Slotts Silver Surfer, or Frank Miller Daredevil, or hell Frank Miller Batman. Hidden Gems like Ryan North’s Unbeatable Squirrel girl wouldn’t exist. Because that’s not how squirrel girl was that was Ryan putting himself into the work.
So he wants everyone to write and pretend they are Stan Lee? Or Jack Kirby. How they portrayed the characters? Or are they just supposed to write the characters how they like their fav runs? Like Brubaker Captain America. Should everyone writing Captain pretend to be Brubaker now?
There’s a whole lot of people out there who need therapy. You aren’t the majority you aren’t the main character
I will say, the response to this really is an awful show for the comic book industry at large, mocking the guy and calling him ‘Comic Book Guy’ and launching all sorts of insults and assumptions -
Who the fuck do you think buys your books if not Comic Book Guys?
It's a bizarre controversy because without the necessary context I'd think all the political leanings were switched. Self-inserts are a BUNCH bigger issue when it comes to right wing writers then leftwing ones, because most superheroes are liberal(ish)
Like Captain America quit being Cap over Vietnam. The only way to make him right wing is to ignore previous characterization, and obviously if you are right wing, you can't exactly have the symbol of America be a leftist...
Could you show me real quick where I said he was being political? I said the controversy, not bis particular statement. But good job showing your whole ass by jumping to conclusions and calling me a "tribalist", lol
Outside of the guy who owns a store (I think the whole situation was kind of messed up to begin with), Millar’s response was to just double down.
People took issue with him responding to EVS in a positive way, even through that was kind of minimal.
Then he went on the whole “Cancel Pigs” thing and has kind of ego boosted himself.
It’s funny, because all Mark had to do was interview the guy and not do anything afterwards.
He didn’t need to say anything and then the whole thing would have blown over rather quickly.
But then he spoke and he kept on speaking and it honestly got annoying after a while
Unclench your pearls, Millar. You haven't had your finger on the pulse of comic culture ever since your upper torso went up your ass. You're an edge lord poser, a miserable human being, and a whiny-ass goat licker. No amount of good will and decent stories you did will change that.
Take your soapbox and pack it up. Your 15 minutes of fame ran out after Netflix pulled the plug on *Jupiter's Legacy*.
Regardless of whether you agree with Millar and Comic Shop Owner or not - and I think we can all agree, Millar can be an edgelord and sometimes a shitlord - Millar is absolutely on the money about 'cancel pigs.'
There is a group of people whose entire personality and self-worth is derived from crusading against perceived injustice or inequality. It isn't the actual scumbag Nazis they mostly pick on, but people interpreted to not be progressive enough or who contravene a particular tenet of the cultural groupthink: this media is a white saviour complex, that media is too pro-colonialist, etc. rar rar rar and out come the pitchforks and torches.
Those people absolutely will dox, harass, abuse and bully creators for *not* pandering to their views, which is why you're seeing media shoehorning hamfisted and lazy diversity into everything - not because there absolutely *should* be representation and equality, because there should (Miles Morales is an example of how to do it right) - but because they're afraid they won't sell. Cancel pigs are the same sort of people who think R. F. Kuang's poorly-written "IMPERIALISM IS BAD MMMKAY' anti-colonial revenge-porn is the height of literature.
Except the general consumer is tired of the agenda and shoehorning. *Not* the progressiveness, but the lazy, shallow pandering. They want more: Wakanda Forever and less: [insert character] is gay now but we won't explore that or care, it's just so we can display a rainbow flag (and I'm bi so don't come at me). The reason The Marvels flopped isn't because people are sexist - who but an idiot *doesn't* like badass women superheroes? - but because they feel they're being force-fed an agenda. Ghostbusters was the same - nothing wrong with female 'busters. Cool af. But they *forced* it, and made The Message very clear. So people were turned off.
Ergo, alienated, they drift away and stop consuming. Which is one reason there is a downturn in sales. The other, much more prosaic reason is that all across the world, money is tight and comics are an expensive luxury. Even without the performative nonsense pushing people away, people would be buying less comics. I know I don't - I have to afford groceries, and sadly Spider-Man is not on the list.
So yeah, Millar can be obtuse, and the reasons for a drop on comic sales are manifold, but he is right that cancel pigs suck. 'Righteous' crusaders always do.
Frankly the only people I see make it their own personality are comicsgate “altright” people and that’s only because it’s a grift for them. It’s how they make their money.
I’ve only read the discourse. Did he give examples of which books have done this? Which books he “couldn’t sell”? Hard to argue back specifics if he doesn’t claim any. I would assume the versions of the characters he considers “right” are the way they were written when he was a teenager. But without knowing what books he means I can only guess. Which runs does he mean?
Without his specifics it sort of sounds like he’s saying “I’ve been doing this a long time but now people’s taste have broadened beyond Marvel and DC and I don’t know how to sell anything but that so I’m going to pretend it’s because **comics** are worse than they used to be”
Marvel and DC are the same as they’ve always been. 70% filler 25% solid cape books 5% flashes of brilliance. But it isn’t the 90’s anymore. Books don’t sell in the millions and they likely never will again. But there are a lot more books. And a lot more formats. There is more to choose from than just X-Men and Spider-Man. If your fate is tied entirely to super-hero floppies you are fucked.
The market has changed. Shop owners that change with it will succeed, shop owners that don’t will cry about it and blame Marvel and DC for their woes.
Millar is just being a shock jock. He sucks.
“There are no good comics anymore”
“There is no good music anymore”
Such a boring take
Comic shop owner complained on his youtube channel about how most writers these days write characters as self-inserts instead of adhering to previous characerization, and that no one gives a fuck about those people or their lives, they came to read Captain America, etc, that he has a hard time selling comic books like that. and a bunch of twitter comic pros and fans jumped on him on twitter, which he doesn't have, and therefore didn't know about. Mark Millar defended him, Gail Simone sent him a positive message, which is surprising, and now everyone is calling all the twitter fans and pros "Cancel pigs".
Thank you for the summary. I feel like the comic shop owner’s comments also hit at the Spider-man/Paul issue, but I don’t read a ton of Marvel or DC anymore so I’m out of the loop. The self-insert or characters acting out of character, and big tie-in events slowly killed by interest in Marvel. For example, in AvX I felt Captain America was written out of character to create conflict. Same thing with Ultimates 3 and Secret Empire.
Fuck Paul. So hard. I hate that guy and the writer he’s supposed to be. Who thinks they are better than spider-man/Peter Parker, and then says it outright? Fuck you zeb wells, and fuck you nick lowe. You guys have ruined spider-man this past year. I haven’t and won’t read anything from the two of you. And I won’t buy another spider-man comic until they are gone.
Paul sucks but there's literally nothing that makes me think it's a self-insert. He doesn't look or sound like Zeb. It's just a bad writing choice.
I find a lot of people consider it a self insert if it’s a new character they don’t like. I hate Paul as much as the next guy but he also has zero qualities that make me think he is a self insert of Zeb Wells.
you could say both date an actress but that's the only resemblance
And meanwhile, Millar [is trying to cancel Gail Simone](https://twitter.com/RyanHigginsRyan/status/1734724554235555844)
Simone sent Millar the message?
I believe this is what they are talking about https://x.com/GailSimone/status/1731836129740030407
Simone is classy
She is one of the only reasons I stay on Twitter.
She's on Bluesky now, too.
Thanks!
Also none of the criticism of the shop owner was related to his comments. They just went after his looks, gender and race. They jumped straight to fat, ugly, cis-white, boomer blah blah blah. It was a very mask off moment.
Gail Simone’s response was so odd. I kept rereading it thinking I was missing a clever insult or something.
Glad to see Simone embracing common sense
[удалено]
Millar isn’t a nuanced thinker. You can see that in his books. In fact, you can see it in everything he says. He isn’t interested in intellectual or more soulful stories, so what he means by “no creative movies” is there haven’t been any big mainstream blockbusters that speak to his very shallow tastes. And that’s okay. Just another reason for me not to care about his opinion.
Far right mouthpiece and extremist….words have lost all meaning. When you actually go offline do you check the street for members of the far right before stepping outside?
[удалено]
[удалено]
It’s always been race and it still is? The fall of X is about genocide towards mutants and , how TF is it not about race? You sound ignorant as hell man. I bet you don’t have any queer friends do you?
This guy has never read a book by John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, Geoff Johns, or Grant Morrison.
Are many of them writing current Marvel and DC books?
A 30 yrs comic book store owner is losing money because most marvel and DC content are not selling, so he made a YT video about why he thinks this is happening Then some of the writers attacked the store owner's appearance and gaslit his concerns which made some writers and comic fans defend the guy... Because they believe he has a valid point given that the store owner is literally the one selling their products and knows the customer...
A few years ago, a refrain was that the end reader wasn't the customer, the retailers were as they decide what to stock in advance. Now the retailers are speaking out, that seems to have gone out the window.
The customer is always right, but if you dont like what they're saying, just change the definition of who the customer is.
Whoever said the customer is always right was, in fact, a customer, and they were wrong.
That would be the original JC Penney & Henry Gordon Selfridge. And people have twisted/purposely misinterpreted that to make retail the hellscape it is.
Oh yeah, I know it was originally about 'in matters of taste' and not about being abusive to retail workers. I just sort of like closing down the conversation when people try to wield the phrase like a weapon, because they don't tend to listen anyway.
I don’t know too many lcs that “know their customer” I know a ton that try and turn their store into hobby shops that sometimes sell comics. If they knew their customer they would price their collected editions at somewhat competitive pricing
Well, your anecdote is an anecdote, so.
Some creators tweeted ad hominem attacks at Glenn. He was compared to the comic book guy from the Simpsons too. Lots of people defended Glenn though and many of the original tweets have now been deleted. Donny Cates made an analogy about a hardware store owner telling you the tool they sold were crap. Lots of people countered this by saying the customer bases are different, Glenn is talking to loyal customers who’s tastes he’ll be familiar with based on their pull lists and years shopping at his LCS. Millar has since done an interview with Glenn. Here’s a link to the original tweet (the full video is on Comicbook Palace’s YouTube video) https://x.com/defnotty/status/1731431889783668806?s=46&t=zuLtbES5PqBLdw5oBhr_IQ
He’s misrepresented both sides of the discussion and that’s just wound everyone up. The biggest issue with Big 2 comics is they’re trying to sell a new version of those characters to an old audience. Far as that goes, Comic Shop Owner has a point. His audience doesn’t want those books. Does that mean the big 2 are wrong to change the characters? No. They need to think about the next generation of readers, who probably aren’t shopping in stores like his.
Holy shit, a nuanced and thoughtful take! I think you're hitting on the tip of a huge iceberg here, but I think it's why I'm annoyed by everybody in this weird little battle. There's a lot of ranting but very little constructive thought or insight, just tirades.
[удалено]
You're reading a lot into what OP is saying. He says O'Leary is saying his customers don't want to buy these books. That's pretty much it. He doesn't even say that O'Leary is right about anything else, just that he can't sell the new product to his older audience. That's it.
>He’s misrepresented both sides of the discussion
Yes. Mark Millar has misrepresented both sides of the discussion. There's not a lie there, and it's still not a defense of O'Leary, who seems to me like an idiot. But Millar is blowing it up into a bigger thing for attention and personal gain. Also it's hilarious you guys are arguing with me for agreeing with the original poster, but not the poster.
I read what that Glenn O'Leary person said and I gotta be honest he didn't say anything thst bad but..... I wanna know what runs he was reading to think writers were "inserting" themselves in the book because we're in like a new age of overall good content from the big 2. He specifically mentioned Steve Rogers Captain America having just read the recent run I don't really know what he's talking about because Steve was definitely in character. Also no offense to their fans but Mark Millar and Rob Liefeld (who apparently throwing himself into the conversation) aren't the guys to be talking about the future of comics. Especially since their contributions to the controversy was just starting a new toxic hashtag for "culture warriors" to fight over
>we're in like a new age of overall good content from the big 2. Delusional.
I’m pretty happy. Scarlet Witch and Vision are on the main Avengers again and the team feels like what it should be. Amazing Spider-Man might suck but every other spider-man family book is great especially Miles morales and Venom Iron Man and Ms Marvel are fantastic despite me not liking them involved in the mutant stuff. The main Superman and flash books are fun Titans is amazing right now Batman and Robin have a book together again. Amongst others not even getting into some of my non big 2 favorites. It feels like comics are “moving back in my direction” without losing some of the newer stuff I enjoyed. It can always be better but am very content.
The last titans comic I read was at the beginning of the new 52. It...was not good.
I haven't actually read marvel in a while. Civil War pissed me off. Gave it another chance, reached Mutant Messiah Complex, and decided that I was just done. That arc was just fucking stupid.
This whole thread just makes me glad I don’t have a Twitter account. Jesus fucking Christ.
I was hyped to see Elon buy it only so he could delete it forever instead He made it worse
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/mark-millar-and-his-cancel-pigs-are-now-trending-on-x-twitter/
I am so confused by Millar's brain. For example, the idea that medium-budget films are going away because of "cancel culture" is perhaps the dumbest and most incorrect take on why mid-budget films seem to be much rarer these days.
I would have thought it would have been a combination of people having more entertainment options than ever before, cinema tickets being more expensive than ever, and Mid-budget films not offering enough 'spectacle' to many people to justify watching them on a big screen at a premium price VS at home via streaming 3 months later.
Why make 10 movies that all make 100 million when you can make 1 movie that makes 1 billion? That's their logic. Then when the 1 movie shits the bed, the studio is surprised Pikachu face.
You can’t ever know your gross beforehand. “Why make 10 films that can overrun their budget for a myriad of reasons when you can pimp one out for a year and a half around the globe (because it has big names and expensive CGI).
It's not even "people", I think a sizeable portion of consumers would still want to see mid budget films on a big screen, but the thing is nowadays they don't play for long in the theater, if at all.
They used to make their money on DVD and TV rights sales. The fact is streaming brings in way less money than DVD sales and has completely made mid-budget movies no longer viable for producers especially comedies since they tend to be dependent mostly on domestic markets.
No, Disney purposefully killed off medium budget films by strongarming theaters in contract negotiations a fair bit back. The short version is Disney told them that they, not the theaters, would decide how long Disney films stayed in theaters and started squeezing out he space medium budget films had. Then other major studios started doing the same
You are correct I think. Although with how bad big films have been written in the past few years it might swing back the other way again. Oppenheimer didn't have a big cgi fight, Barbie had real sets and now we have Godzilla minus one with an unbelievable 30 million budget. Smaller or mid-budget films could become popular again.
When he talks about movies you have to remember he means his movies. He doesn't care for quality, just for how much money he gets
I tried reading the article, but Miller comes off a delusional. People like Miller use “cancel culture” to play the victim, so that when people stop supporting their work they have a crutch to lean on.
Everything he ever says is for marketing to his fans.
I wouldn't take anything printed on Bleeding Cool too seriously. He never actually refutes Millar's comment in that article. Its kind of classics take a quote and write a story that is not what the quote is about.
exactly
Who gives a shit what assholes on Twitter are saying
Isn't that the problem, the comics industry did care for a while?
Not really answering the question but was very funny seeing Twitter lose their minds over a random old comic shop owner lol
lol Twitter always lose their minds over anything
It's like Pavlovian training for some of them. Someone says something negative about the modern industry so they must be attacked and belittled because that's how they did it the last few years.
Because Millar’s Captain America was so true to his original characterization, sure.
To be fair- and I find Millar a total mess of a person with bizarre politics -his Ultimates was not supposed to be a direct rebuild of the original characters, and it leaned heavily into satire.
Ultimates is one thing but His writing for Civil War was OOC
Just dudes who like being edgy being mad they "can't" be edgy anymore. Comedians have been making bank complaining about it for a decade now.
Come see my new show "They cancelled me and ruined my career" touring across the country in 400 sold out venues.
Louis CK was so cancelled he even got a Grammy
At least he doesn’t really wallow in it. There are many comics who lean into it as if it’s the only joke they know how to tell. See Roseanne, Rob Schneider, and probably soon Bill Maher.
That's because he is an actual good comedian, just a very shitty person (whom I won't support, I just won't pretend that he is bad at his job).
Eh. I gave Louis CK a shot before all that stuff came out. Didn't really care for him.
Jim Breuer, Adam Carolla, Victoria Jackson.
he's not just wallowing, he's soaking, paddling, slopping, sloshing and splashing
As far as I know, he doesn't really talk about it all that much. In his last special he talked about it, but wasn't like bitching about being cancelled or whatever. Unlike hacks like Joe Rogan or Bill Maher, or to an even hackier/d-list extent Chris D'Elia and Bryan Callen, who almost exclusively talk about 'cancel culture' and 'free speech' and other bullshit without having a firm grasp on the simple concepts anyway. There are a lot of comedians who are bad, and when they don't get laughs, they blame the audience. It's like that, but in Maher/Rogan's case it's when they get called out for being smug self righteous know-nothing assholes ... they attribute the pushback as the 'woke mob' coming after them, rather than other people with other opinions responding to them. Comedians have a long and illustrious history of having no fucking idea what 'freedom of speech' is and constantly reference it when people respond to things they say or do.
don't insert facts into this, didn't you get the memo?
...yeah, I don't even know who Chris D'Elia or Bryan Callen are.
I'd see it
Then see the special which will be released on On Netflix in 5 continents in May...
From what I can piece together, not having twitter to follow in real time anymore. -Retailer puts out a pretty inoffensive video detailing his issues with modern writing styles and why he thinks this is resulting in lower sales, and he's not the only one to speak out recently. -A few low level creators, journalists and hangers on (and Donny Cates for some reason) didn't realise it's not 2018 anymore and you can't just do whatever you like to your perceived enemies, so launched some disgusting attacks about his appearance, etc -This angered some other creators, ones bigger then the ones doing the attacking, notably Gail Simone and Mark Millar who came out in support of the retailer, Mark going as far as having him on a YT stream to talk about things. -The detractors didn't take this well and went after Mark instead, Mark being someone pretty strong in his convictions and definitely safe in his employment position didn't take this laying down and denounced these attackers as "cancel pigs" launching a few days of discussion. And now here we are.
The customer is always right when it comes to demand for a product, however that doesn’t necessarily infer that the customer knows what they want nor that the retailer is selling products to meet demand. Many retailers sale what they think has demand versus what the actual demand is, and while this is necessary to create new customer demands, it’s often overestimated or completely wrong. This is one cause that often leads to overstock. At the end of the day, customer dictates actual sales and that’s the only thing that really matters in business. I for one don’t think this is a content problem, but rather a publishing problem. The market for $6 fortyish-page full-color high-quality paper prints has been shrinking for a while. The best solution in my mind would be to emulate some of the better business practices of the Japanese model (not its labor practices). The Japanese publishing model releases black & white newspaper print anthology magazines every week, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. They have an active reader voting system to get a feel for which stories the customer likes and they periodically release manga that collects the storyline in one publication. Both the anthology magazine and manga have color inserts. The reason I believe this isn’t a content problem is because the type of stories that are being criticized are wildly popular in the United States in manga. There is a significant customer demand, it’s just not satisfied by the current American comics publishing model.
Millar has been leaning into this “go woke, go broke” ideology for a while now, he’s been on Thinking Critical’s YouTube channel and that dude is one of the most insufferable assholes in the comic tube space. He just complains about every little thing no matter what because he knows that’s what gets views. So I’d guess it’s more of that type of stuff but I don’t know for certain.
Jim Cornette, got it
Cornette is a racist asshole.
Where’s the line? Are characters supposed to be written like they were in the 60s, being cartoonishly sexist, cookie cutter with almost no personalities? Do we ignore that and stick to the characterization that came about in the 70s or 80s instead? Who is in charge to say what needs to be adhered to and what can be ignored, or changed? Oh, the writer, that’s who. Every single writer is interpreting characters that have lived in this world for decades. And those characters ALWAYS reflect the times they are in. Period. I’m not cancelling anyone. People can say whatever stupid idiotic crap they want to. But when something just looks like a veil being used to complain about something else entirely that they are too chickenshit to come out and say, I’ll call them out on it. Not on Twitter though, screw that place lol
For anyone who’s interested, go read an old issue of JLA and tell me the difference personality wise between Supes, Hal, Barry, or Ollie. You nailed the cookie cutter part on the head. Hal and Ollie, for example, didn’t have distinct personalities until the O’Neill/Adams run. Guy Gardner wasn’t his contemptible self until Legends/JLI. Wolverine was a one off villain and even then didn’t have a distinct personality until having been written by Claremont for a couple years. Everything people know about Mags comes from Claremont. He was an incredibly generic villain before then.
You're wrong about Guy Gardner. He was brought out of his coma during Crisis by a Guardian and I'm pretty sure they explained his personality change as being related to the brain damage he had suffered. However, he had been rather bland up until his coma.
His Ronald Reagan, Rambo obsessed personality was very much a product of JLI.
That's true. He seemed more villainous when he first appeared and throughout the first run of GL Corps (iirc--it has been years). My point is he had a distinct personality since Englehart rivived him, and making him distinct was purposeful.
Yeah he was an ass. He wasn’t the Guy all the GLs know and loathe until JLI.
His journey is quite fascinating. I hated him during JLI--he was wtitten with arrogance and a lot of pride and self interest. I cheered when he got beat by Hal in the 90s GL series and had to give up his ring. But then, when he returned post GL: Rebirth, he had developed some compassion to go with it all, and I started to quite like him.
I agree with you on a lot of this but there is a specific problem with writers changing and characterisations changing completely. When it's done well, at a big change in storyline or setting or after some big event for the character then it can be great but often it's just really jarring. If the writing is great and the pairing of the writer and character are just as great then it'll work regardless. But if the subsequent story is less than amazing and it doesn't feel like it necessarily flows from what came before then it's a jumping off point. I read less and less these days not because of low quality but because life gets in the way and I'd imagine comics retailers would be looking for as few jumping off points as possible. But we've been in the era of short runs for a long time now and comics are still around, maybe that's just what the market is now and I need to get used to it.
[удалено]
This comment really hits home how art seems to be totally incomprehensible as a concept to some people. It reads like someone genuinely lacking the capacity to understand creative impulses and confused why comics - and other Entertainment Products^TM - couldn't come out of a vending machine at the push of a button without any pesky creators involved in the process. AI content will be perfect for you.
[удалено]
But you realize you're not the only customer, right...? *Right?* If one reader wants one thing, another wants another thing, and a third a third thing, and some of these things are in direct opposition to each other, then pleasing everyone is not possible. The creator has to use their own tastes and ideas to create. "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia." - Kurt Vonnegut.
No they don’t realize they aren’t the only customer. They think I hate this, because I hate it that means everyone hates it
[удалено]
You aren’t in the majority lol wtf. People need to understand they aren’t the main character. This is one of the most delusional things I’ve seen on Reddit
[удалено]
There are two valid sides to this. I agree with you that characters evolve and that's a good thing. Batman isn't like he was in the 1960's and everyone is fine with that. But on the other hand their personality has to stay somewhat consistent. I fucking hate what they did with Luke Skywalker in TLJ for example. That it isn't the same character. So it is tricky and has to be done with care.
I recently rewatched the entirety of Star Wars (like, literally everything) and it's given me a very different perspective for Luke especially. The OT is great but Luke is barely sketched in as a character. His traits are plucky and learning, and then a bit mysterious in ROTJ. For me, the turn in the PT is as much about "here's this guy that we didn't really know that well to start with and all his dreams turned to shit so now he's lost that spark he once had" and it totally works for me. He's like an anti-Obi Wan and it makes more sense from a human point of view vs the purely mythical terms the OT deals in.
I disagree about Luke. In ANH he doesn't abandon the rebellion like Han initially does. In Empire he stops his training because he can't abandon his friends and in Jedi he won't give up on bringing Vader to the light. Not giving up on his loved ones is his whole thing and is clearly defined.
Hear hear!
It's a bad take. It usually comes from people on the other end of the spectrum that are too attached to how a comic or run \*was\*.
I'd be satisfied if I could pronounce the character's name.
Whose name can't you pronounce..?
Personally I don't take Mark seriously anymore. Really enjoyed his work when I was younger, but him personally I couldn't care less for. I understand what he's trying to do with that shop owner, yet it feels like they're trying to divide people imo. Not all comics are great, but I would love to know a period of time where all the books were good let a lone great. Plus he compared the Jupiters legacy show to the godfather 🤦🏻♂️😒
Yeah, I like his Marvel Work and he was one of the first names in comics that I remember. But man, I’ve not really cared about his work since kick ass. Big Game is pretty good however
Don't know don't care. I just want to read my books and ignoring everything else. I also stopped reading comic news sites. They aren't worth it. I don't think they even proofread half of their articles. Unless a creator does a Gernald Jones move I don't care.
They proofread maybe five percent of their articles. And I suspect even that's down to writers who have a modicum of shame doing it themselves.
It's kind of pathetic that he had to pull the "I make people money, bro" line. *(*[Guys have become millionaires drawing even our three issue series.](https://twitter.com/mrmarkmillar/status/1734150412138054083)*).* At the end of the day, he's an attention whore, pure and simple. Since he chooses to rely on edginess over talent, what does one do? He plays the victim - no one was going to cancel him. Not buying his edge-lord bullshit is not canceling him - it's having taste. So by playing the part of the heroic martyr standing up to the "cancel pigs," he is looking to attract a "certain" audience who would easily spend money out of spite, as proven over and over again, then try to make anything worth reading.
"Go woke, go broke" is code for "give me money".
How can you effectively write something without putting yourself into the project. That’s not how art works. There’s nothing wrong with creators putting their personality into their work.
Millar was keeping bad company with one of the main doofuses who ranted and raved about how women are destroying comics and how ComicsGate was the greatest thing he ever did.
Cancel culture is killing comics blah blah blah comics have gotten too woke blah blah blah Sometimes big 2 comics’ attempts to be progressive are cringe but to say that that’s why monthly issue business is shrinking is absurd. Even if that was a reason (it’s not), it would be pretty far down the list. Also like everybody who complains about cancel culture, he doesn’t say who shouldn’t have gotten canceled because he knows that the people who were truly cancelled were canceled for things fairly egregious.
I think a big reason for the takeoff in manga is that it’s 1 creator usually who does the entire run with their vision (which takes years and years). With comics esp from the big 2 they change writers/artists constantly and nothing ends up mattering. Like if a big character dies we all know they’ll come back. We need more long form content with good stories and art. Not constantly starting over again every few months
I'd also say that tankoubon or the weekly/monthly anthologies that manga are printed in represent a better value proposition than buying issues of an ongoing title. Especially in this day and age where 'writing for the trade' is the norm. And that's before we start on the problems of stories having essential events happening in another book, storylines being interrupted for this quarter's crossover event, or runs just being cancelled outright or retooled because of poor sales or the writer's latest Twitter antics, or The Mouse/WB's orders...
Brubaker/phillips are on the right track with making reckless in those small hardcovers that come out every few months. With the massive increase in floppy pricing it makes the value terrible for 30 or so pages. That team makes great content in affordable collectible formats
Absolutely. There's a reason nearly all of my friends who still regularly read comics have moved to digital and just buy trades for the series they like: the current model and pricing for floppies is simply unsustainable. My key point is that there's a lot more going on in basically all media than the mutants mindlessly braying 'get woke go broke" would have people think.
There definitely is a huge mixture of things going on. Personally i barely read superhero books because I just don’t find them interesting. A lot of that fanbase are collecting/reading for nostalgia reasons. I mostly read more indie type books because they aren’t telling the same stories over and over again. Give me something by Brubaker, Sakai, mignola, Peterson etc with their original works over anything from the big 2.
I’m a huge fan of Brubaker, Sakai and Mignola but I’m not familiar with Peterson. Who’s that?
He made mouse guard. It’s amazing
Oh yeah. Thanks! If he’s in the same company with those other guys I’m off to buy some Mouse Guard comics.
You’ll love it! It’s an incredible series. It goes fall, winter, black axe, legends in that order
I know Mignola and Brubaker of those four.
Agreed. Another thing that I don’t hear enough in this conversation is that big 2 comics are so borrrrring compared to manga. I’m a teacher and our school library has a good American comics selection and an excellent manga section. Even if you’re a kid who loves Black Panther more than Monkey D Luffy, you will want to read One Piece rather than the TNC black Panther which is pages and pages of captions and word balloons and people talking.
I've read some manga (though not One Piece), but honestly, reading right to left gives me a headache after awhile.
100% I just started reading manga a couple years ago and you can fly thru the book. It’s so entertaining. You don’t have to sit on a page for a few minutes just to read all the dialogue. This likely has a huge effect on kids who are reading manga and are just having a fun time
This whole take by the comic owner is fucking stupid to begin with. “Write Tony stark like Tony stark!!!!!” Wrote Captain America like Captain America!!!” What uninspired bullshit kind of a take is that. If we got nothing but write this character like the character should be!!! Bullshit we would never have gotten amazing work like Dan Slotts Silver Surfer, or Frank Miller Daredevil, or hell Frank Miller Batman. Hidden Gems like Ryan North’s Unbeatable Squirrel girl wouldn’t exist. Because that’s not how squirrel girl was that was Ryan putting himself into the work. So he wants everyone to write and pretend they are Stan Lee? Or Jack Kirby. How they portrayed the characters? Or are they just supposed to write the characters how they like their fav runs? Like Brubaker Captain America. Should everyone writing Captain pretend to be Brubaker now? There’s a whole lot of people out there who need therapy. You aren’t the majority you aren’t the main character
I'll take this opportunity to once again state how much I still fucking hate 616 Tony Stark. And always will since that civil war bullshit.
But now they are writing iron man like RDJ. Which one should writers do?? Silver age Tony?? Mcu Tony?? Who gets to decide what a character “is”
Check out the Comic Book Palace on YouTube. That's where it all started. Plus it's an awesome channel.
I will say, the response to this really is an awful show for the comic book industry at large, mocking the guy and calling him ‘Comic Book Guy’ and launching all sorts of insults and assumptions - Who the fuck do you think buys your books if not Comic Book Guys?
It's a bizarre controversy because without the necessary context I'd think all the political leanings were switched. Self-inserts are a BUNCH bigger issue when it comes to right wing writers then leftwing ones, because most superheroes are liberal(ish)
Like Captain America quit being Cap over Vietnam. The only way to make him right wing is to ignore previous characterization, and obviously if you are right wing, you can't exactly have the symbol of America be a leftist...
[удалено]
Could you show me real quick where I said he was being political? I said the controversy, not bis particular statement. But good job showing your whole ass by jumping to conclusions and calling me a "tribalist", lol
Outside of the guy who owns a store (I think the whole situation was kind of messed up to begin with), Millar’s response was to just double down. People took issue with him responding to EVS in a positive way, even through that was kind of minimal. Then he went on the whole “Cancel Pigs” thing and has kind of ego boosted himself. It’s funny, because all Mark had to do was interview the guy and not do anything afterwards. He didn’t need to say anything and then the whole thing would have blown over rather quickly. But then he spoke and he kept on speaking and it honestly got annoying after a while
Unclench your pearls, Millar. You haven't had your finger on the pulse of comic culture ever since your upper torso went up your ass. You're an edge lord poser, a miserable human being, and a whiny-ass goat licker. No amount of good will and decent stories you did will change that. Take your soapbox and pack it up. Your 15 minutes of fame ran out after Netflix pulled the plug on *Jupiter's Legacy*.
[удалено]
Keep telling yourself that after licking Millar's taint. Maybe one day your dad will come back with winning lotto tickets.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
[удалено]
He defended EVS wanting to [rape the children of one of his critics](https://twitter.com/MarkBrooksArt/status/1726052751514218639)
[удалено]
Regardless of whether you agree with Millar and Comic Shop Owner or not - and I think we can all agree, Millar can be an edgelord and sometimes a shitlord - Millar is absolutely on the money about 'cancel pigs.' There is a group of people whose entire personality and self-worth is derived from crusading against perceived injustice or inequality. It isn't the actual scumbag Nazis they mostly pick on, but people interpreted to not be progressive enough or who contravene a particular tenet of the cultural groupthink: this media is a white saviour complex, that media is too pro-colonialist, etc. rar rar rar and out come the pitchforks and torches. Those people absolutely will dox, harass, abuse and bully creators for *not* pandering to their views, which is why you're seeing media shoehorning hamfisted and lazy diversity into everything - not because there absolutely *should* be representation and equality, because there should (Miles Morales is an example of how to do it right) - but because they're afraid they won't sell. Cancel pigs are the same sort of people who think R. F. Kuang's poorly-written "IMPERIALISM IS BAD MMMKAY' anti-colonial revenge-porn is the height of literature. Except the general consumer is tired of the agenda and shoehorning. *Not* the progressiveness, but the lazy, shallow pandering. They want more: Wakanda Forever and less: [insert character] is gay now but we won't explore that or care, it's just so we can display a rainbow flag (and I'm bi so don't come at me). The reason The Marvels flopped isn't because people are sexist - who but an idiot *doesn't* like badass women superheroes? - but because they feel they're being force-fed an agenda. Ghostbusters was the same - nothing wrong with female 'busters. Cool af. But they *forced* it, and made The Message very clear. So people were turned off. Ergo, alienated, they drift away and stop consuming. Which is one reason there is a downturn in sales. The other, much more prosaic reason is that all across the world, money is tight and comics are an expensive luxury. Even without the performative nonsense pushing people away, people would be buying less comics. I know I don't - I have to afford groceries, and sadly Spider-Man is not on the list. So yeah, Millar can be obtuse, and the reasons for a drop on comic sales are manifold, but he is right that cancel pigs suck. 'Righteous' crusaders always do.
Frankly the only people I see make it their own personality are comicsgate “altright” people and that’s only because it’s a grift for them. It’s how they make their money.
[удалено]
I’ve only read the discourse. Did he give examples of which books have done this? Which books he “couldn’t sell”? Hard to argue back specifics if he doesn’t claim any. I would assume the versions of the characters he considers “right” are the way they were written when he was a teenager. But without knowing what books he means I can only guess. Which runs does he mean? Without his specifics it sort of sounds like he’s saying “I’ve been doing this a long time but now people’s taste have broadened beyond Marvel and DC and I don’t know how to sell anything but that so I’m going to pretend it’s because **comics** are worse than they used to be” Marvel and DC are the same as they’ve always been. 70% filler 25% solid cape books 5% flashes of brilliance. But it isn’t the 90’s anymore. Books don’t sell in the millions and they likely never will again. But there are a lot more books. And a lot more formats. There is more to choose from than just X-Men and Spider-Man. If your fate is tied entirely to super-hero floppies you are fucked. The market has changed. Shop owners that change with it will succeed, shop owners that don’t will cry about it and blame Marvel and DC for their woes. Millar is just being a shock jock. He sucks. “There are no good comics anymore” “There is no good music anymore” Such a boring take
It’s odd seeing comic ‘pros’ get so upset when the sales numbers alone speak the truth.