jasonderoga86

I’ve been doing a lot of research on the comics industry since the artist Ian McGinty passed away at age 38 due to exploitation and overwork by his publisher. But today I came across another article regarding the industry as a whole, written by Heidi McDonald of ComicsBeat.com: “Retailer warns that comics are dying again” … and how it appears to be drawing its final breath like the fallen artists it bled dry did when they could take no more.

But it also brought up something that I wish I hadn’t read about. There are a LOT of people out there who believe the comics industry isn’t being killed by publishers treating their artists like slaves, wringing them dry and then leaving them for dead, but to stuff like “Leftist Marxism”. Yep, those pro-Comicsgate troopers want to blame the comics industry’s wasting away on “Wokies” and “Social Justice nonsense”. In fact, they’ve been doing it since 2015, and there were cases in which innocent people actually got hurt as a result of the extremism it produced. As I said before, I met one of the big names of this crusade in person long ago – Earthworm Jim’s creator Doug TenNapel – and had no idea that the guy would be taking part in something so sinister in the future, and recently, the bookstore I met him at -- owned by the store owner who stocked my graphic novels and stands firmly against White supremacy (with a sign clearly saying so on her front door, herself a White woman) -- has apparently de-listed most of his books as “unavailable”. Go figure. Yeah, capitalism isn’t the enemy. The ones condemning its corruption ARE.   

It saddens me that since 2015 there are people who feel they have to bring extreme politics to an industry that’s captivated so many readers and fans over the 90+ years it’s been in existence. It’s like 2015 was the year when everything became labeled as either “right-leaning” or “left-leaning”. A similar problem occurred with the whole “AI art” thing – people have been politicizing that too, each side pushing their own extremist agenda. The point I'm trying to make is, we all get it; both political parties have extremist “wings” that reared their heads when the 2016 election approached and made their presence known when the victor was named. But can we keep that shit out of entertainment as simple as comics? Why do so many people politicize the expiration of all these industries that are unrelated to politics? I know from experience that this approach can not only ruffle feathers, but someone can (and will) get hurt as a result, emotionally or physically.

Myself, I do believe the comics industry’s demise is due to the dictatorial machinations of the publishers and their exploitation of talent only to discard them once they’ve outlived their usefulness. But I’m not putting politics front-and-center as my reasoning. I’m using the basic concept of honesty and morality, two very important mindsets that are completely void in the industry right now. Not “gender-swapping” (they should argue that on the merits of unnecessary changes to established characters, not on “wokeism”), not “exposing the corrupt government” (the article in question elaborated on how leaders, even American Presidents like Nixon and dictators like Hitler – both abominable people – were villains in a few Marvel/DC stories). The simple fact that the comics industry sucks the life (and money) out of its workers, drops their empty husks in a dumpster, and searches for saps who’ll make fine replacements is the sole problem here. Not politics. Dishonesty and wickedness. Let’s just make that crystal clear, before any more people get needlessly harmed.