The Four Color Media Monitor

Here's something interesting I found on Reddit: a recent discussion about Marz by GamerGate supporters who're let down by his anti-GG stance, even though some of the SJWs attacking video games for petty reasons are basically the same people who didn't like his work on comics like Voodoo, formerly a Wildstorm cast member. One of the posters begins by pointing to some comments he made that sum up the problem with all the people taking the media's anti-GG attacks at face value:

Ron Marz, meanwhile, is a guy who is no stranger to such controversies. Gail Simone's famous Women In Refrigerators website refers to events that took place during Marz's run as the writer of Green Lantern in the mid-1990s.

Of course, part of Voodoo's history is that, when she was initially recruited for the team, she was working as an exotic dancer. And with the New 52 basically wiping out the history of most of the WildStorm characters, it appears as though she'll be back at that job, at least at first, when her new #1 hits next Wednesday. Oh, and the first story page readers saw was the one above, where she's at a strip club on all fours.

In a nutshell, the character was bound to come up in these conversations, and being released on September 28 (the final week of the New 52 launch) means that the only information out there so far is hearsay, conjecture and--a close cousin to both--the Internet.

"It's part and parcel of what goes on anytime you do a large initiative that gets a lot of press," Marz said of the negative attention this issue is drawing. He says that in comics, because the audience has a very tight relationship with the characters, "Why isn't that book what I want it to be?" is a recurring theme. (Some readers may recall that Marz has some experience with this issue.) On the one hand, he says, it's great to see that kind of passion in the readership but on the other hand, it's frustrating when fans get so vocal about issues before an issue ever hits the stands. "Certainly Voodoo has gotten dragged into this discussion on the depiction of women even though the book's not out yet." He also hinted that Voodoo is something of an espionage book and there may be a reason why she's doing that particular job in that particular place at that time which will become clear only to people who judge the book on its merits instead of on a single, unlettered page of promo art.

"I think it's very easy to sit back and throw rocks because every time this stuff comes up, it's not really a dialogue," Marz says of the larger issue of gender in comics. "It's a series of monologues where the parties involved say what they want to say, arrange their evidence in whatever way best supports their argument and ignore everything else."

The quotes came from an article on ComicBook, and he should look at himself in the mirror when he says that. Now, here's one by a guy who once defended his work, and this is the one to pay sharp notice to:

Ron Marz's stance annoys me because I actually defended him from SJWs back in 2011 when he was getting flak for Voodoo: [link]

And he actually thanked me for it: [link]

So we learn that among the people Marz is letting down, that includes folks who stood up for how books like Voodoo and Witchblade were written (the latter is being cancelled by Top Cow/Image soon) after Marz was attacked by the very crowd he sides with now. Another says:

So he's just another guy who got in hot water with the offendatrons at some point and is now trying to make amends.

Yeah, that could describe the issue at hand. And still another one says:

It is a kind of a man who writes stuff like [link] and retweets stuff like [link] so I think his understanding of what GG is from the mass media smear campaign, and is not aware our enemy hates him too.

Anyway, [link]

I suppose you could say that Marz's problem is relying on face value reports from the MSM. But, there's another possible reason why he went this route: he used to work as a sports/entertainment writer for newspapers, and that could also explain his hostility to GG: the whole complaint about poor ethical display in any kind of journalism must've rubbed him the wrong way, because even in sports reporting, there's dishonesty abound, and the worst part is that some people in the business see nothing wrong with that. Not even Marz. It's also easier to attack another medium other than your own over that same kind of stuff you had no problem featuring in your own work.

If we've learned something here, it's that there are people out there, liberals & libertarians included, who, if they read Marz's work, they realize today that he's the kind of man whose writing they'd have to take with grains of salt. I wonder if the people he said he wanted to block include those who originally defended the T&A imagery in his own storytelling? Most likely, and if he did, that'll just prove how ungrateful he really is.

Labels: dc comics, indie publishers, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, technology, violence