Random Acts of Rudeness

Many years ago, I was attending Mark Gruenwald’s memorial service. I was just standing there, minding my own business, looking quietly at some of the displays, and a woman walked up to me and said, “Excuse me…are you Peter David?” I said yes. She said, “I just wanted to tell you, you’re a terrible writer. Just awful.” I stared at her and said, “Thank you for sharing that.” She walked away.

If Internet blogs had existed as such at the time, I’ve no doubt she would have blogged or twittered about it.

Flash forward to a fan attending the Chicago Wizard Con and he discovers that, unannounced, Rob Liefeld is sitting at a table. Is Rob sitting their boasting abut his greatness? Is he talking about how his contributions to Marvel are the greatest ever? No. He’s just minding his own business, drawing a sketch of Wolverine.

The guy, fulfilling a personal ambition, walks up to Rob Liefeld and thinks it the height of hilarity to tell him that he demands Rob apologize for “Heroes Reborn.”

Rob, by the fan’s account, doesn’t rise to the bait, which is probably more restraint than a lot of people would have shown. To compound it, the guy goes off, acquires a copy of “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” and gives it to Rob with an inscription declaring how he should learn from it.

And then he boasts about the entire encounter on his blog.

Whenever you wonder why some pros don’t want to be bothered with conventions, remember this encounter and you’ve got your answer.

It’s one thing to go up to someone out of the blue and start bìŧçhìņg at them about their work. It’s, in my opinion, kind of rude. Falls into the “If you don’t have something nice to say…” category. On the other hand, paying customers have their right to voice their opinions, and when you’re a pro, it’s part of the risk of going out in public venues (which is, again, why many don’t bother.) But raising said criticism to the equivalent of performance art transcends simple dissatisfaction, and then boasting about it to show how fearless you are, takes it beyond legit criticism and elevates it to the level of just being a jerk. It’s no longer about the work or your dissatisfaction with it. It’s about showing how wonderful you are and looking for props from others.

There are some who will no doubt say, “Well, Liefeld had it coming.” In the words of William Munny, “We all got it coming, kid.” There’s not a single one of us who hasn’t put forward his best efforts in something and been judged wanting by others. How many of us would be thrilled about the notion of having someone getting in our face about it repeatedly and then chronicling it online for the entertainment of others?

You know what? The pros are called “guests” for a reason. How about gøddámņ treating them the way one should properly treat guests.

PAD

127 comments on “Random Acts of Rudeness

  1. Revenge rarely looks good, even when one truly has been wronged. When done this way, yeah, it just comes off as pathetic and sad. He waited 13 years to do…this? Couldn’t this have been handled, oh, I don’t know, 12 years ago in a letter to Rob? Or an e-mail sent to his message board?

  2. At the ’94 S.D. Comic Con, a friend of a friend (and a very new one at that — I had organized a get-together of Doc Savage fans and we all met at the Con for the first time), was bragging how he was flipping James O’Barr some guff because he wasn’t answering his questions the way he wanted to (with a video camera in his face). Finally he pretty much asked him if he felt guilty over Brandon Lee’s death, since if he hadn’t created The Crow then Lee would still be alive. I had never wanted to punch somebody more than at that moment. My new “friend” just kind of laughed it off, and I decided it was time to leave.
    Kind of along the same lines, I do not understand the notion of “My childhood’s been raped!” Good grief, are people this fragile that they take it so personally? If you hated the last Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies, don’t freakin’ watch them. How do they “ruin” your precious memories? Some people just like to bìŧçh, pure and simple. And if they think they can be hurtful by do it, the more the better.

  3. I have to say, I met Rob this past year at a SDCC and I was FKING THRILLED. FKING, THRILLED. Sure, he had a defensive attitude, but that was probably my fault. I made the mistake of telling him that I purchased New Mutants #99 the night before (which was the truth)- my 2nd to last issue before completing the entire New Mutant’s run. Baaaaaaaaaad timing, as NM 99 is the 1st appearance of Shatterstar! Still, I was dámņ psyched when walking away from that table.
    .I’m sure the @$$hole fan mentioned above is the exact reason Rob is defensive when meeting fans, and if that is the case I don’t blame him at all. I would be too. I think that when it all comes down to it, the haters are the one envious that they don’t have 15 people walking around at a convention dressed as characters they designed.

    1. I don’t understand why telling him you bought New Mutants 99 is bad timing. I haven’t read any of Liefeld’s New Mutants stuff, so maybe there’s something I don’t know here. I just don’t understand how it’s bad timing to tell him you’re buying his old books.

  4. Rudeness is just sad, unnecessary — and usually one-sided. People who are the first to be obnoxious to others are also the first to take offense if their comments aren’t treated with the deference they think is due to a fan without whom the writer/artist/celebrity would be, in their mind, nothing.

    It’s also worth noting that it’s very easy to disagree with someone, and/or be critical of their work, without being rude. I’ve disagreed with PAD several times here, and there are parts of his writing I don’t like (notably a weakness for puns — a flaw shared by Shakespeare), but when I’ve expressed said thoughts I tried not to be rude or insulting.

    And using a funeral as a time to complain about someone’s work should be, to quote Monty Python, right out.

    (Incidentally, I work in retail — and rudeness is hardly limited to the world of comic books. If we compared tales of rude people, I bet I’d win.)

    1. Retail has got to be the one place where people feel they can be totally rude to a complete stranger and NOT expect to get their clocks cleaned. (this said having worked retail for 20 years. Now I work in airport security TSA and things are MUCH better…)

  5. that act shows why fans at those type of conventions are looked down on as strange by other parts of the world. for the old golden rule applies to conventions too. and the yellow hat guy just showed he needs to work on his manners for like him or not Rob still deserves the same respect for being a comic pro as others in the field. and rob was the better man for not taking the bait of yellow hat guy

  6. Just wanted to thank you for speaking out about this incident. I think it’s important that pro’s speak out against things like this.. even in the face of thier own personal differences. Thats crazy about the lady criticizing you at Gruenwalds funeral. I’m actually an embalmer and i’ve seen some strange incidents at funerals before but that still strikes me as wildly inappropriate and “weird”. Some people just have thier priorities messed up. I’m pretty passionate about comics but even at my angriest i don’t think i would ever approach someone and tell them off. It’s just a matter of being polite and as you said “If you don’t have anything nice to say…”

  7. I tend to blame two things for this. The first is the tv series AMERICAN IDOL. One of the hallmarks of that show is that the judges…primarily Simon Cowell…essentially tear apart the efforts of the contestants, and do so on camera for the audience to gasp and roar over. So what we have here is a show where the judges are showing the audience that it’s okay to render harsh, even rude, opinions of these would-be entertainers. Given that the show runs several times a week during each season, and that the results are debated ad nauseum on the internet and elsewhere as if they really matter in the grand scheme of things, is it any wonder that “fans” think it’s okay to offer similar abuse to pros whose work they don’t like? Haven’t Simon and AMERICAN IDOL shown us that this is fun, funny, and cool?

    The other thing I blame is the sense of entitlement that so many people nowadays seem to have. Kath has brought this up before on her own blog; we seem to have raised a nation of people who really never grew up and learned how to behave in society. Instead, we have people who feel that their every want must be immediately satisfied, and if it isn’t, something is wrong and they are entitled to whine and act like the spoiled brats they are.

    So it’s not enough for, say, a writer to knock his brains out on a story and hope that the majority of the audience likes it. Each reader nowadays feels that for his money, the writer owes it to him personally to make sure that he is satisfied…and if the writer fails to cater to him personally, he is entitled to enact any sort of revenge he sees fit, whether that’s calling the writer a hack on the internet, or insulting him in person at a con, or sending hate mail and death threats against the writer AND his family, or all of the above. Because that writer committed the first, unpardonable sin of failing to entertain him. When you’re brought up to believe that the world revolves around you, that’s the only response that is acceptable.

    People like the clown who ambushed Liefeld, or the woman at Gruenwald’s memorial, make me ashamed to be a fan. I hate to consider myself to be a part of the same segment of the population as people who think that kind of rudeness is okay, under any circumstances.

    1. I don’t think American Idol is to blame. Simon is really not as mean as people think he is. He’s just very honest. His comments tend to be pretty constructive (and they’re almost always correct), and he’s never abusive, the way, say, Gordon Ramsay is. The contestants expect and, for the most part, appreciate his criticisms, so it’s really not a comparable situation as this whole Liefeld case.
      .
      However, with your second point, I think you’re absolutely correct. Fans, especially comics fans, have come to believe that artists and companies owe them something. They think their favorite comic characters somehow belong to them, and that those who produce the comics are answerable to them. It’s the same reason fans get so angry every time a comic book is late, as though they’re a client who personally commissioned the comic book, instead of a patron who is simply purchasing someone else’s work. They become so invested in their favorite series that they forget that the comics are simply a product like any other, created for the profit of the producer. It’s up to the consumer to decide if they want to purchase the product, but those who produce it are under no obligations whatsoever, any more than a glass blower is obligated to blow glass in a certain way or with a certain level of skill. Nobody goes up to a glass blower and says, “Hey, thirteen years ago I bought a little glass unicorn from you. I want you to apologize for making that glass unicorn. It wasn’t as good as other glass unicorns I’ve bought.”
      .
      The way I see it, Rob Liefeld is just this guy who loves what he does and gets paid to do it. What’s the harm in that? It’s such a rare thing that, if anything, he should be congratulated for becoming such a success. If you don’t think he has talent, if you don’t like his product, then don’t buy it. I don’t go see Michael Bay movies because I don’t think he’s talented, but, as an aspiring filmmaker, I am in no way resentful of his success. On the contrary, I just think, “Good for him, he made it.”

      1. I agree. As fans go from kids reading comics to adults reading comics they become more aware of exactly who is producing the product they’ve been such a fan of growing up. So if a creative team changes and the tone of the book shifts dramatically (ie: PAD’s long Hulk run to the 4-issue “Hulk in Space” immediately following that I can barely remember the details of) some fans go nuts and feel personally insulted that their beloved characters has been tarnished. I guess what they don’t realize is that in the end pros are just fans that can draw and write a little better and got lucky.

    2. It’s all AMERICAN IDOL’s fault?? *Really*? I mean, you can blame AI for an awful lot of things, but this is stretching credulity past the breaking point. In the immortal words of William Shatner, “It’s just a TV show, dammit, it’s just a TV show!”

  8. Wow. It’s amazing how uncivil some people can be. I have seen a lot of examples of this lately, this rampant narcissism and lack of empathy for others. It is almost scary.
    As for Rob, I have to admit I’m a fan. His “What if Wolverine Was An Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D.?” is one of my favorite comics. I think overall his early work especially was kinetic, energetic and exciting. Stuff like the Levi’s commercial brought a coolness factor to comics. This contributed to thousands and thousands of new readers checking out the hobby.
    I met him once and he was more than happy to sign a copy of his latest book. Got mad the marker he was using dried up halfway through signing it and instead of just continuing from the point on the one point, grabbed another book so it would be a “real autograph”. he seemed like a genuinely nice guy.
    Regardless of whether or not that’s true or you like his work, he certainly doesn’t deserve crap like he got from this jáçkášš.

  9. My girlfriend and I were at this convention last week. We took a comic by Rob that we enjoyed and he asked him to sign it. At the time he was doing a sketch and I felt bad to ask, but he was friendly enough to stop sketching and sign the comic and even thank us for stopping by. It definitely makes it worse for everybody involved when fans are rude to the creators, as it discourages creators from coming and damages the rapport other fans might have developed.

  10. Kathy makes a great point in her blog that this is what happens when ambush humor like “Borat” is so popular. While I probably enjoyed Borat more than she did I do feel bad for a lot of the people who get ambushed and then are made to look as bad as possible. And while Sacha Baron Cohen is a funny guy, most of the jerks who try to do the same thing are just jerks with a camera. Jerks with a camera who will probably one day see the error in ambushing people in a country where gun sales are way up.

  11. You know, I have to say, I’ve never been a fan of Liefeld the guy OR Liefeld the artist…but after reading all of this, I kind of want to meet the guy and thank him for being cool.

    1. Idon’t care for his work, but i’d like simply to apologise to him on behalf of fandom.

      Sort of like BD (the right-wing warmonger) apologising to the woman at the PTSD stress clinic, on behalf of the Army; not because he felt any *personal* responsibility, but because the fact that she had been sexually assaulted in the Army shamed the entire Army and him as a former Army officer.

      And he gave her a purple candy heart that said “Got Your Back”.

    2. This is not directed at you. There may have been a reason for your personal opinion of Liefield. But one thing I don’t understand is why many people have opinions on Professionals/Celebrities they never met. My wife will NOT watch a Russell Crowe movie. She thinks he is a jerk. I don’t get it. She hasn’t met him. She only knows what the media has portrayed. I keep telling her to forget that stuff and just enjoy the performance.

  12. I think this sort of behavior goes beyond any sort of fandom, or rather, I know, as I have to deal with it nearly every day at my job.

    The funeral story kind of reminds me of something that happened at my old job at an office. One day an older woman came in and I witnessed the secretary greet her politely and ask what we could do for her. She informed us (in a pleasant tone of voice), that she thought the new building we had recently moved into was a terrible eyesore on the community, and left. None of us felt offended at the time, we merely laughed it off as a random occurrence.

    (One) of my current jobs is at an older movie theatre that has a long standing history in the community, but was recently bought by a larger company who runs things a bit differently than the local company did. I get no end of (often nonsensical) complaints from people who would on the street come off as average citizens about every little thing that’s changed. That’s not to say that I’m in a similar position to Liefeld, purely that, given the least provocation, people will come into a business, harp on that businesses peons about what an awful place it has become, and still demand the attention and customer service one might reserve for someone who regularly saves children from burning buildings. In my case, most of these people are older (generally anywhere from mid 30s to late 60s), but I’d imagine that for comics this loud minority of whiners is a bit younger. Whenever one experiences this phenomenon on a regular basis, it’s really easy to get worked up about it (especially if the only solution to get rid of these people is to smile and agree), but it becomes quite clear that these folks are the minority. A loud, angry minority, who will complain about things in a way that it’s clear that they believe their demands are reasonable, sure, but I only tend to encounter one a day.

    The part that I struggle with is that it’s clear that these people believe that they’re taking a stand. It would never cross their minds that they’re being incredibly rude and that the people they’re speaking to want nothing more than for them to leave and never return (or perhaps, catch a nasty cold and loose their voice). And yet, I’m certain, that if I were to turn around and go into their place of work and complain about equally nonsense things, they would perceive my behavior as rude, and find no reflection of such behavior on themselves. The guy who approached Liefeld, for example, say he started working as a chef in a nice seafood restaurant. If a gentleman were to come into the kitchen and go off on him about how the food is terrible and wave recipes in his face demanding he learn them… does anyone really think he would look back at his past actions and think “O hey, I was being a jerk, I get it now!”? I sincerely doubt it.

    The world is populated with a small portion of rude jerks of all colors, creeds, genders, and ages, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that, honestly, most people would never do that.

  13. Gotta love how so many feel the need to say “I’m no fan of Liefield, but…” before speaking up for him.

    1. This does speak to the fact that there are a lot of people who don’t think it is ok to treat a person rudely, merely because they are not fans.

  14. I also attended the Chicago convention, and witnessed several forms of boorish behavior this year. For example, some extremely infantile young men at a Billy Dee Williams Q&A seemed to be there just to ask pointless questions (such as the “political question” of who would win in a fight, ninjas or pirates?) and then giggle at Mr. Williams. I can’t imagine treating anyone with such disrespect.

  15. Robert, you lost me said this.

    “However, with your second point, I think you’re absolutely correct. Fans, especially comics fans, have come to believe that artists and companies owe them something. They think their favorite comic characters somehow belong to them, and that those who produce the comics are answerable to them. It’s the same reason fans get so angry every time a comic book is late, as though they’re a client who personally commissioned the comic book, instead of a patron who is simply purchasing someone else’s work.”

    “How dare you hold me to a deadline that was agreed upon ahead of time.!?” If you say your going to deliver a product at a certain date and don’t the customer has every right to be upset. Your really trying to use Peter’s story to justify late comics? It’s not like the fans are the ones setting the deadlines. If you feel that strongly maybe you should take it up with the people who make the deadlines.

    1. Well, of course they have the “right” to be upset. It doesn’t make it any less silly or pointless, though.

      I’m a bit baffled by your last sentence. I’m baffled by the first part because I don’t see how mentioning it in one sentence means I “feel that strongly” about it, and I’m baffled by the second part because… wha-huh? Take WHAT up with the people who make the deadlines?

  16. PAD is quite correct that some smug attendees at cons (and others elsewhere – commentors on creator blogs and such) delight in incivility. Being shocking or crude is far from the same thing as wit. Where he loses me is his final paragraph. “Conventions guests” are a very different thing from the traditional meaning of “guests.” They are not people one invites into one’s home who are owed special consideration, but rather salesmen and self-promoters seeking name recognition, good will and book sales. They should not be abused, any more than other merchants, but they are not house guests. Con attendances are a matter of commerce, not personal friendship with the audience.

  17. PAD brings up an amazing point that has always confounded me when it comes to the term, “Fan”. To me, you either a fan or your not. Your opinion is extremely relative and almost always meaningless. You like the artist or you don’t, it’s as simple as that. Your opinion is personal and the truth but so is the next guy’s. It’s hard to master but not impossible. You might hate Rob Liefeld now because it’s the cool thing now. But there was a time when he was the šhìŧ and EVERBODY loved him. You maybe too young to remember or just won’t admit it but it’s true. Well, at least that’s my opinion.

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