The Four Color Media Monitor

Sometimes you learn things through the comments section of a news site. In this case, it involves the scandal caused by Wizards of the Coast, after they shunned Jeremy Hambly, whom I believe developed the Magic: the Gathering card game in the early 1990s, which Breitbart describes in depth over here. Besides the disturbing details surrounding the effort by WOTC managers to dumb down the card game and worse, it seems some comics stores have some of their own blame to shoulder, as the following reader comment explains:

I started playing MTG back in 1993. I remember dealing with corrupt comic stores (where these things were sold) who would go through the packs and take out all the rare cards, then resell them as new. I remember when the tournaments started, and I remember when they got less fun. I stopped playing for about a decade in 1999. I came back and played informally for a few years. I left about three years ago, this time for good. After getting back in the tournaments, I witnessed the future of the game when a girl accused a male player of sexual harassment after he soundly defeated her. With no questions asked, the male player was disqualified, barred from further competitions at that store, and later from all WotC competitions. The girl, she was moved to the next round and defeated.

I wasn’t friends with either player, but I did witness the alleged incident. It was nothing more than light banter, which both were engaged in. The female claimed that she felt “unsafe” as a result of one of his statements. I was done. I dropped all of my participation in WotC affiliated games. I deleted my WotC accounts and I walked away. If you aren’t familiar with Wizards of the Coast, they’re a huge entity in competitive gaming, and while MTG is by far their largest property, they host a lot of other games as well. I was a regional promoter and judge for several of their other games, but mostly Star Trek Attack Wing.

I love that Breitbart is finally covering this stuff. The SJW movement has been active in comic book stores a long time. Some of their earliest victories were in comics and board games. No one took them serious when they were just pushing around nerds, now they’re a major problem.

Good grief. If this is fact, it's another case of a woman crying wolf and doing a horrible disfavor for actual victims, all because she couldn't stand losing at a measly card game. And to make matters worse, WOTC recently had a scandal involving employment of tournament judges who turned out to be child molestors, and initially refused to acknowledge it. Since then, they seem to have turned around and apologized, but the damage has likely been done, and if Hasbro, as their owner, doesn't want a bad image, maybe they should consider closing the WOTC brand and opening a different one.

All that aside, the claim about comics stores engaging in crooked practices is something to ponder, and sadly not impossible. The part about SJWs infiltrating is certainly the case with the X-Men, as LGBT movements and propagandists tried to hijack Lee/Kirby's creations at least 2 decades ago. And now, in a way, it's all come back and bitten them hard, as resulting loss of interest in SJW-plagued comics has led to only so many stores closing around the US and Canada. Stuff like this is just why you could reasonably wonder if it's one more reason why comics would do well to make the shift to paperback/hardcover-only formats, because then, that'd all make it much easier to sell the products in commercial bookstores, though specialty stores would still have validity. The key is to ensure they won't succumb to crooked practices.

Labels: misogyny and racism, politics, sales, violence