The Four Color Media Monitor: Jeff Lemire doesn't want any help from Comicsgate

The latest scribe who opened his huge mouth for no good reason is Lemire, whose credits include Valiant's Bloodshot and Dark Horse's Black Hammer:

Comicsgate is based on fear, intolerance, bigotry and anger. The comics creators emerging today are too talented, too smart and too loud to be beaten by these weak people. It’s time we all started standing up for one another.
— Jeff Lemire (@JeffLemire) August 23, 2018

Yep, keep lecturing us please, all the while ignoring any of the same from inside the medium.

And since we're on the subject, I spotted Lemire retweeting another little item by Phil Hester, which seems to relate to the same mishmash the former posted:

I can't grasp how someone could love the Marvel universe-- one full of heroes who are in one way or another outcasts, but who still choose to fight for the world explicitly rejecting them-- and come away with even a drop of intolerance in their soul.
— Phillip Hester (@philhester) August 22, 2018

Neither can I! Wasn't Hester the same artist who worked with Brad Meltzer on Green Arrow, and stood idly by while Meltzer set about victimizing the DC superheroes and co-stars full force in Identity Crisis? So, what's he getting at anyway? I'm not seeing it. Hester is a hypocrite, plain and simple, who feels entitled not just to Marvel's creations, but to DC's as well, and I think he should just take his laughable drivel and stuff it. I always thought some of his artwork was too blocky-looking anyway.

And it doesn't stop there. Even Bill Sienkiewicz just had to lend himself to the mess in this Facebook post, where he repeats all the unproven cliches:

To begin.
I'm convinced Comics chose ME as a practitioner, emissary, evangelist, what-have-you---rather than the other way around.
Perhaps that's why I tend to view most other creators through a similar lens. Whatever the actual reason people create comics, tell stories, live in this world, it's still a wonderful calling.
Creators are family; every voice is unique and necessary.

That said, Comics sure as hell didn't choose the so-called Comicsgate contingent to promote hateful, misogynistic and plain-old-ugly dogma. No, these 'Gaters- you guys- you brought that ugliness all by yourselves.

So what he's saying is, the self-appointed "gatekeepers" sought revenge upon the audience for objecting to their poor politics and choice of art styles, by doubling down on the same? That's certainly what it sounds like at this point, so he's only making things ever more laughable. Can we be clear here? Those who chose Sienkiewicz as an artist are the various publishers he's worked for, not comics as a medium in itself. And if every voice is unique and necessary, than how come he didn't admit right-wing voices count? Why didn't he defend Chuck Dixon, whose Nightwing series Bill once did some artwork for? And why didn't he condemn James Gunn for his whole misogynist ideology? I'm sorry, but something is amiss here.

It's sad again to see any creators melting down without stressing what their beef is exactly, or why they may have trashed what made their own contributions work years ago. All so they can take out their anger on a movement that was meant to help defend what works in comics and protest what doesn't. Their attitude is why comicdom is sadly going to sink in the end.

Update: Bounding Into Comics explains what's wrong with Sienkiewicz's whole rant.

Labels: moonbat artists, moonbat writers, politics, sales

Avi Green, you need to understand where Mr. Lemire is coming from.

Mr. Lemire started his career in comics doing god-awful indie comics that have received praise from the literary comics critics--the ones who think comics is nothing but another Fine Arts medium. Comics readers who want to appear cultured and sophisticated have read his work along with Alan Moore's stuff, Neil Gaiman's stuff. Unlike the previous generations of literary comics creators, Mr. Lemire and his contemporaries like Mariko Tamaki and Charles Forsman don't care about the quality of their work. If the artistic merits of their work is questioned, they would probably call that "respectability politics" standards, to them, I guarantee, are archaic, and oppressive.

The only acceptable standard in comics (and just about anything else) is that it reflects Progressive, cosmopolitan values and that is where SJWs come in.

Lemire is not overtly and SJW. Lemire's work has a overt hipster sensibility. Hipsters started to enter the comics industry just prior to SJWS. A lot of hipsters are SJWS or seem to have been indoctrinated by them.

Chris Ware comes to mind.

https://boingboing.net/2017/08/04/short-film-about-chris-ware.html

"I distinctly remember being told by my teachers, if you draw women, you're colonizing them with your eyes"

Lemire also got his first living wage paying work right before DC went with their notable "social justice" themed direction under the "New 52" initiative. I guarantee you that a lot of Lemire's contacts in the industry are SJWS. From 2005 to 2010 Lemire was a nobody. After 2015, he became a writer who could get work anywhere was getting movie deals by 2015 based on mediocre to just plain bad work that no one can describe the appeal of. How did he get so successful and why he did may have a lot to do with who has been helping him and supporting him. Lemire has benefitted a lot from the new set of gatekeepers that have become powerful as the American comics industry shrunk--he has benefitted a lot from the rise of sjws. Nowadays, it is usually sjws who like to take nobodies and make them a star overnight be coordinating positive press and using gatekeeper seals of approval--like an award from a library association or an Eisner.

Lemire knows who's gotten him to where he is and is not people buying his work. The people who have gotten Lemire to where he is academia. Academia is overwhelmingly composed of sjws. SJWs in academia buy his work if it is recommendations by influential librarian associations and academic awards. These awards can garner interest from Hollywood, which is becoming dominated by sjws, slowly but surely. Lemire not only understands what has made him successful but he has also internalized the value system of his friends in academia. The key thing that people in academia believe is that the customer is always wrong and that educated bureaucrats should be deciding what you should be reading.

Posted by Saber Tooth Tiger Mike | 4:46 PM

I see. The way Lemire climbed the ladder could also be called the influence of nepotism, which is certainly the case at Marvel when they keep employing the same far leftists even well after C.B. Cebulski was appointed EIC.

I spotted Lemire writing a post on his own blog stating he hasn't changed his mind about what he's said earlier on Twitter. And, I guess he never will.

Posted by Avi Green | 12:19 AM

It seems like the comics industry is vying to become a gentified art form so that its support comes more from academia and philanthropy than from the public.

Lemire's personal work has been tailored for the approval from academia from the get-go, so I can't see him deciding it's time to make Art that appeals to a non-academic audience.

Posted by Saber Tooth Tiger Mike | 5:33 PM

What librarians do you know of that can put down their 100 chapter novels in favor of graphic novels that can be read in 5 seconds or less? Where would they even have the room to put the number of books that you guys think they order?

Posted by Anonymous | 6:14 PM