The Four Color Media Monitor

I noticed some people on Twitter were disappointed with the writer Jim Zub for acting as apologist for colorist Tamra Bonvillain because she blocked anybody who followed, say, the videos of Richard C. Meyer. The query reads as follows:

...colorist Tamra Bonvillain has blocked all of D&C’s follower and told all of us not to buy any of TB’s books. I want to buy your books, but I don’t know what to do when I’m being told not to.

So what was Zub's response?

Tamra’s an adult making choices that work best for her when it comes to Twitter. I’ve been pelted with insults and demands here on Tumblr and elsewhere and can completely empathise with the temptation to shut it down, keep things private, and stay focused on work that needs to get done. You may feel slighted, but accessing a creator’s social media and interacting with them directly at a moment’s notice isn’t a right. At best it’s a fringe benefit of our modern world.

Oh for heaven's sake. This isn't a matter of whether anybody was abusive to her in the first place. It's that she seems to have a grudge against Meyer's ilk because she hates their politics, and just for that, she shuns almost everyone involved, including people who never even spoke to her. It's honestly ridiculous to push the block option when you don't even know if they're criminals and whatnot. Yet she's one of the kind of people who's taken an approach similar to Dan Slott, Kurt Busiek, Aubrey Sitterson and goodness knows who else takes a vindictive stance against anybody who dares avoid their leftist groupthink. So it's disappointing Zub would take it all out of context. What he should've done was refrain altogether, or just recommend separating the art from the artist.

It's not the only faulty approach he's ever taken. He'd written a few months ago on his blog an answer to a question about how he got into Marvel without capitulating to their ultra-leftist agendas, and said:

First off, I think it’s important to establish that answering your question doesn’t mean I agree with the premise. Marvel Comics (and Marvel Entertainment) are huge corporations employing hundreds of people and run by dozens more. I have no doubt that there are individuals across the political spectrum who work and run Marvel.

Sorry, but, it's not that simple, and besides, who's to say they can't be selective in their employment choices if they want to be? That's one of the reasons why Chuck Dixon's been blacklisted to date, and Mike Baron surely is too. Don't get me wrong, I know Ike Perlmutter's a conservative supporter, but he's done nothing to ensure even liberals with reasonable platforms will find employment at a publishing arm he's basically written off as inferior to the movies adapted from their stable of characters, and that's why, you could argue, Perlmutter's not much different from Zub. If Perlmutter won't do anything to distance Joe Quesada from Marvel, then he's basically a failure in the leadership role he's had for years now. Say, has Zub ever come to the defense of Dixon and Baron? Guess not, all because he doesn't want to risk his paychecks.

It's too bad, because from what I know, Zub's far from the worst creator in the medium, though if I read his work at this particular point, it won't be his work for Marvel, but from smaller publishers, if only because I don't want to grant validity to Axel Alonso's own approach, which Zub played along with. The error Zub's made is that he wouldn't refrain from apologia, which does no good for anybody.

Labels: marvel comics, moonbat artists, politics