Month: November 2003

Okay. Fine. I accept the apology of the fan in question, and am even willing to concede the idea that he was “only kidding.” But I want him, and all those who echoed his “only kidding” defense, to consider the following: You don’t know who reads what you post. You can’t know. And if there was one person who took your comments seriously enough to report them to me because he was concerned…it’s equally possible that there was someone else who read it and said to themselves, “Great idea. Let’s get that SOB once and for all.” The defense of “Just kidding!” doesn’t go all that far if something happens, does it.

However, in the spirit of acceptance…I’m going to address major complaint I recall reading in the thread, right here, right now, regarding the Supergirl Plus issue (which, despite its title, was not a comic aimed at hefty girls.) See attached:

Continue Reading “THE APOLOGY” →

I think this is important enough to say separately from the previous thread, and it’s addressed to anyone who thinks I might be overreacting to a simple blowhard:

I take threats seriously.

Repeated threats, I take very seriously.

Repeated threats with others joining in adding suggestions, I take extremely seriously.

You think I shouldn’t?

You weren’t standing in an elevator with Bill Mumy at SDCC when a fan lunged for his throat shouting, “Send me to the cornfield, Bill!”

You haven’t had friends who have had to hire private guards, obtain court orders, and never set foot in certain cities, all to avoid stalkers.

You haven’t been subjected to letter writing campaigns of harassment from people because you *refused* to confront them.

You haven’t done a store appearance where a guy showed up and berated fans on line for a solid half hour simply because they wanted your autograph, and the store clerks wouldn’t throw the guy out because they were afraid of him, so you had to do it yourself.

And you don’t have to be worried that you’ll be standing at a convention holding your one year old daughter in your arms, chatting with someone, and suddenly some guy is going to come up to you and take a shot at you and he misses you and you’re standing there covered in your child’s blood.

And of course you can say, in the words of Superchicken, Well, Fred, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. For every perk of fame, there’s a drawback. And that’s true as far as it goes.

But don’t for a microsecond think that I don’t take threats seriously. And for those people who claim they “know” the people making threats, and “know” they would never, ever, ever, do something truly violent: The majority of murders in this country are committed by someone the victim knows.

Yes, kids. I take threats seriously. If you don’t, that’s nice. It’s nice to be able to afford that luxury.

I can’t.

PAD

Go forth and speak. (You do that, and I’ll stop trying to sound like Warren Ellis.)

I appreciate Michael Pullman, on an earlier thread, bringing the following to my attention, since it serves as such a perfect example of how to do it wrong…the “it” being having a gripe about the way an author wrote a story. If you have a grievance, do you (a) Go to the author’s publicly known website and ask him about it, or do you (b) mischaracterize it through hearsay and then make a series of threats against the author. If your answer is the latter, then the following is the place for you:

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84384

It’s actually a pretty handy thread. Rarely do you see the worst of the fan mentality so neatly encapsulated in one place. Anyone planning to do a research paper may want to reference it.

PAD

My agent, Frank Balkin, has a saying when it comes to show biz: Most things that probably will happen, don’t. This is sage advice whenever you encounter people who are telling you about a movie that they’ve allllllmost got the financing for, or a deal is allllllmost in place.

Apparently this is also occurring for the creators whose work was supposed to be part of the new “Epic” line, who are basically watching their inventory being burned off in a quarterly publication. Sort of the equivalent of jumping straight past the whole monthly thing and go straight to the trade paperbacks, except they’re collecting the entire line rather than a single title.

In retrospect, I guess it should have been obvious. It is standard operating procedure in Hollywood that when a major development executive gets canned, one of the first things his successor does is dump all the significant projects the exec had in development. Why? No percentage in seeing it through. If the project succeeds, the new exec gets no credit for it because the guy they fired was the one who brought it into the fold. Heck, it even makes people start wondering why the guy was let go in the first place. On the other hand, if the project fails, the new guy gets the blame. “Why did you see that project through? It was being developed by a guy we got RID OF, for crying out loud? What’s wrong with you?”

Same deal with Marvel. Where’s the percentage in continuing Epic, which was a high profile Jemas project? If it takes off, Jemas was a genius. If it tanks, why in the world did they continue with a new line conceived by a guy they marginalized into irrelevancy?

By the way…”Nowhere Man” is a far superior title to “Phantom Jack.” “Nowhere Man” has poetry to it. “Phantom Jack” sounds like something the Phantom uses to fix a flat tire. Why’d they change it, anyway? Legal problems because of the Beatles tune? If so, okay. If not, it was a mistake.

PAD