The Four Color Media Monitor

Dixon was interviewed by Bounding Into Comics, discussing his work with author Vox Day (who's one of the earliest I know of to coin the Comicsgate phrase after Gamergate), along with his Levon novels and another project he'll be producing at IDW, and also reminded that the anti-conservative blacklisting in the comic book medium is still quite real when the topic of artist Will Caligan comes up:

BIC: Will also lost his job because of his very personal Christian and conservative beliefs. There have been a number of people who hold similar conservative and Christian beliefs who have also had their careers threatened or lost. Do you see this as a serious problem in the comic book industry?

Chuck: Damn right. A lot of great talent is either unemployed or underemployed because of either their personal religious or political beliefs. Their personal beliefs. The blacklists are very real and a lot of careers have been damaged. And as bad as this kind of discrimination is, the effect of silencing other creators who fear for their livelihoods is even more far-reaching. It’s intimidation, pure and simple; a radical core of far-left editors and publishers forcing their ideologies on the creator community as well as the readership.

Most damaging, in the long term, is the hiring of staff and assigning of freelancers based on their political beliefs rather than any kind of merit. The result is the current crop of, frankly, mediocre efforts from companies that used to be the industry leaders. It’s hard to find even a competently written and drawn comic let alone anything that could be called exemplary examples of the medium.

We’re all paying for this with depressed sales overall and the loss of readers who may never come back.

BIC: Blacklists seem to be a pretty hot topic right now. One Twitter user even created a pretty lengthy list for customers to boycott certain professionals. He labeled these professionals as the “main contributors… to the declining quality” of comic books. What are your thoughts on this list?

Chuck: I don’t like lists of any kind. Blacklists, redlists, enemies lists or ****lists. While it’s true that a number of people on the list I saw are guilty of writing agenda-driven comics, a few on that list are vocal personally on political matters, but not in their work. The declining quality of comics is due to creators who prioritize their ideology above their professional standards. So much of the stuff I’ve seen is simply poorly crafted comics. They call attention to themselves by doing crap work. No lists needed.

BIC: I also read Marvel has had you on a blacklist for over 15 years. Is that true? How do you go from writing one of their best-selling comics with Punisher: War Zone to completely blacklisted?

Chuck: When you don’t fall in lockstep with everything Axel Alonso believes. Of course, which of us is still working in comics today?

Thankfully, it's Dixon, if only because Alonso was recently fired by Marvel towards the end of the year for turning them into a double-disaster after Joe Quesada received an undeserved promotion. And Quesada, by contrast, is still working in comics on the next floor, while C.B. Cebulski's acquired the job of EIC. But was Alonso really the reason Dixon got blacklisted? I'd assume Quesada was, because Dixon had already been working on several stories published in one of the Marvel Knights entries before they shunned him altogether, and the MK line was what got Quesada the job as EIC.

As for counter-blacklists, I understand if Dixon disagrees, because he must think two wrongs don't make a right. For now, I can say that, while I may be willing to buy some of Jim Zub's work for companies like IDW, I cannot buy his work at Marvel until Quesada's left just as Alonso has. There's every chance Quesada will try to exert bad influence, and surely do what he can to prevent restoration of the Spider-marriage, which remains a challenging question as Cebulski takes charge of editorial. Rotten apples like Quesada cannot be ignored, because it's clear they still have influence.

And even Dixon's made mistakes - or at the least taken questionable steps - in the past that need to be avoided too if Marvel and DC are ever to regain full readability, coherence and trustworthiness.

Labels: dc comics, good writers, indie publishers, marvel comics, politics