#amwriting #comics #comicsgate- Mike Deadato Calls For a Witch-hunt

#comicsgate- Mike Deadato Calls For a Witch-hunt

Another day, another daft #comicsgate story.

This time it is Shoot the Breeze who have an ‘interview’ with Mike Deadato jr, who as an artist has worked all over the place within comics. For several weeks Mr Deadato has been grumbling about this and that, and blocking people left-right-and centre in solidarity….

Several days ago, Mr Deadato was calling on conventions to ban anyone who has come of out of the #comicsgate closet. If the conventions didn’t, then he wouldn’t attend. And he called on others to stand with him. Though he made the concession that people who support #comicsgate could attend the conference as paying guests. Which is fine, since most people supporting #comicsgate, or in sympathy with it, would be paying guests anyway… since they are customers.

But now Mr Deadato has gone further. He wants people arrested…

“ WHY isn’t the police involved? There is not a law these people are infringing? Why aren’t they in prison?”

Now let us stop and think about this for a minute.

Let’s use as an example Geeky Sparkles, from Clownfish TV, since she is pretty representative of who people supporting #comicsgate actually are. We can throw Neon in there too, since they are married, and it would be a cruel and unusual punishment were they not to share a cell in Mr Deadato’s gulag — obviously he would empty their pockets first of money (this being a matter of principle to him).

She criticises the practices and cliquey nature of the comic book industry. She is just as critical of people like Mags Versaggio and her threats of violence, or Robbie Rodriquez sending anus pictures — both of which are potential actual crimes. If anything, she goes further, lambasting the way in which the comic industry has coerced and subverted web-comics, cutting off revenue sources for independent creators, gatekeeping, and she has been critical of the ‘SJWs’ .

Of course, the fact that Geeky Sparkles and her husband are liberal Democrats matters not a jot to Mr Deadato, in his self imposed exile behind his block-chains. Because he knows better.

In answer to the question….

“ Despite verbal attacks on creators, Comicsgate has said one of their goals is to promote “organic introduction” to women, people of color, and LGBTQA+ individuals into comic books. How do you feel about this?”

He replies….

“ That is a lie. They are an alt-right group. They want nothing of that sort. The racist and homophobic attacks on social media are enough proof.”

Which given that Ms Sparkles is an art teacher in a public school — not trying to doxx her, just reporting what she has said on her podcast — for Mr Deadato to start accusing her of being ‘alt-right’ could have serious repercussions. You know, because not everyone has indulgent employers like Marvel and DC.

And speaking of indulgence: in the religious sense.

Another question raised over the weekend was whether it is worse to call a woman a ‘cum-dumpster’ than it is to call a man a ‘cum-rag’.

I really should keep a note of these things for the next time I speak to St Thomas Aquinas during a seance. He may well have wrestled with the knotty problem of angels on the head of pin, but I fear his theological training would not have prepared for such a problem. No doubt he would have cited the sin Onon and perhaps a few verses from Deuteronomy.

For those not in the know, the ‘cum-dumpster’ reference comes from the ‘dark roast’, an apocryphal text oft cited by the Catholic Church of Corporate Niceness — CCoCN+ — as a sign of heresy among the unwashed Protestants of #comicsgate.

And lo, the devilish form of Richard C Meyer did accuse the saintly Heather Antos of being Tom Breavort’s work-girlfriend, and in the midst of verbal combat, masquerading as jokes, called her a ‘cum-dumpster’.

Now we don’t need to go into the whys and wherefores of who was insulting/threatening/harassing whom at this point in the story: or why Heather Antos, dear sweet innocent maiden that she is in all of this, was ever mentioned in the ‘dark roast’. Suffice to say it was a joke, in poor taste, since retracted, and not that dissimilar to Gail Simone cracking jokes about eating children in a recent published comic.

So on Friday Nasser Rabadi got involved in a spat with John Layman from Image comics. During this argument Nasser Rabadi accused John Layman of making racist remarks toward him. John Layman claimed not know what race (‘alt-right’) Nasser Rabadi is. Before launching into a tirade about this and that, during the course of which the term ‘cum-rag’ was used.

So unhappy at this customer service Mr Rabadi went to Mr Layman’s boss, Erik Larson, and was given the brush-off: and the philosophical question then arose from this rebuttal…

“ In what way is “cum rag” a racist term? Every insult is not a racial slur. That’s not how that works.”

“ You’re moving the goalpost. “Cum rag” is not racist. “Cum dumpster” is, however, misogynist. There are implications to being called a “cum dumpster” — those are NOT the same when the gender of the insulted is changed and the insult is different.”

Now we can, if you want, get into the weeds on this one, given that Mr Rabadi is of Middle Eastern origin — Lebanese I recall, but I could be wrong — and there are cultural implications to be considered, as anyone who has ever attended a Cultural Sensitivity Workshop will know. For instance, to call someone a ‘dog’ has very different meanings depending upon the part of the world you are in. And it is best to just steer clear of terms like ‘nitty-gritty’ all together.

I’m sure there are some who would no doubt argue that ‘cum-dumpster’ is a word that needs to be reclaimed, to defang it in order to empower women. And equally there are others that would point out that its a bit rich for Mr Larson to be giving lessons in misogyny, given the content of his Savage Dragon books.

I suppose in end it boils down to your attitude to sperm.

Of course given that Mr Larson is a cleric (nay bishop) in the CCoCN+ (well perhaps not — but for the sake of the metaphor we’ll say he is) it would be completely improper of me to point out that ‘cum-rag’ has homophobic connotations. But obviously to suggest that an ally of Mr Deadato, in the trenches of #comicsgate, would not only defend such homophobia, but actively support another ally of Mr Deadato’s use of such terminology when telling a #comicsgate secret-shopper to sling his hook, is obviously far fetched.

Which makes it all rather tricky, especially given Mr Deadato’s call to imprison people.

After all this is on the internet. And there are plenty of countries around the world that calling someone a ‘cum rag’ would get your collar felt for homophobia. Just as there are other countries that the use of the term to suggest you are gay, might well see you grabbed by the fuzz and carted off for moral crimes.

It would all be a bit embarrassing for Marvel or DC if because they published the work of a particular artist or writer, who had sperged out on the interwebz, their comics were banned, and their online store blocked, in those said countries.

Don’t be daft, I hear you cry, this is the CCoCN+, the are the good guys.

Well yes, perhaps, but remember Gerhard Haderer, the cartoonist who was subject to a European Arrest Warrant for his rather sweet comic book about the ‘hippy’ Jesus that was deemed to have broken Greek blasphemy laws in 2005.

Because here’s the thing.

Calling for the police to get involved in the critiquing of comics is daft — particularly when you are doing it from behind a block-bot wall, being fed snippets by people using you for their own ends.

Yeah fine, Mr Deadato might well get a few of his ‘enemies’ into trouble, but he is just as likely to get his friends in trouble or himself.

Of course the real irony in all of this, is that the people who have got these “pros” so wound up, i.e. the comic critics on YouTube like D&C, Just Some Guy and Mim Headroom, have been of late noticing an improvement in the comics being produced, since CB Cebulski, and have been urging people to buy them — sometimes with the caveat ‘or don’t’ because of what the writer or artist has said or done on Twitter.