The Four Color Media Monitor

There's former fans of the disgraced Gaiman who sure made pretty peculiar moves in their admiration of pop culture, and according to this Rolling Stone article on Yahoo, some are having Buyer's Remorse about getting tattoos inspired by Gaiman's resume:

...for millions of fans, it will be impossible to see Gaiman as they once did, and this is perhaps hardest for the people who expressed their admiration in the indelible form of a tattoo.

As one reader with a tattoo inspired by Gaiman’s dark fantasy novella Coraline put it on X, formerly Twitter: “The continuous neil gaiman news is devastating to me and genuinely makes me want to cut my skin off. i got this tattoo months and months before his allegations and as a lesbian sexual assault victim having something he created on me makes me ill. why are people so evil???” The post includes a photo of the large ink work, which covers their entire forearm. In a 2023 post on the platform, another fan, showing off an arm tat of a character from Gaiman’s comic The Sandman, wrote, “First thing I did when I got it was text my friend ‘Neil Gaiman better not ever turn out to be a creep,’ lol” — as if to predict the very fallout the writer’s most devoted readers are now facing.

A tattoo artist, meanwhile, wrote on X, “I personally never got into Gaiman’s work, but I have tattooed a LOT of things based on it for clients. It feels like a good reminder that ANY fandom tattoo you get runs the risk of being spoiled by the creators doing heinous things, even if you think ‘it could never be them.'” (Indeed, the allegations against Gaiman have been devastating for his community in part because of the perceived feminist themes of his books.)

Well his tribute to Islam in the 50th issue of the Sandman could contradict the whole notion he supported feminism. But you can't expect most leftists to consider the possibilities. This article, however dampens the impact when it brings up J.K. Rowling:

“Tattooing has always kind of had a bit of a fandom element,” says Thomas O’Mahony, the London-based co-host of the podcast Beneath the Skin, which explores history through the art of tattoos, along with Dr. Matt Lodder, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex who specializes in the field. O’Mahony mentions how 17th-century pilgrims would get tattoos of “the Coptic cross in Jerusalem, as a proof of pilgrimage, and what is the biggest fandom if not the fandom of Jesus?” Pop culture has always been well-represented in the tattoo medium. In the 1920s, O’Mahony says, artists were “taking designs from Disney cartoons, stuff like Steamboat Willie, very early cartoons. Tattooing, a lot of it is directed by what consumers want.”

But Gaiman is one of those figures who seems to particularly lend himself to tattoo culture, O’Mahony says. “I think there’s a level of parasociality that has been engendered through his work,” he says. “Like, if you look at traditional authors, no one’s really getting a tattoo of Stephen King. They might be getting a tattoo of the works that he’s created, but there’s a primacy of the author in Gaiman’s works — he’s so present in them.” As a bestselling and highly recognizable author, O’Mahony feels Gaiman might be more comparable to a rock star (and musicians have certainly inspired many regrettable tattoos in their own right). A more literary precedent for the Gaiman situation might be J.K. Rowling, whose ceaseless transphobia in recent years has led countless fans to remove or cover up their once meaningful Harry Potter tattoos.

This is just what the Times of India was talking about. The double-standard on the left when it comes to LGBT ideology. Why does the RS writer think that's so much more important than women's safety? Also note how Rowling's experience with sexual assault is ignored in this piece, and that says quite a bit about how this article flubs. If Gaiman suddenly took up such an identity as transsexuality, chances are quite a few leftists would be voicing less concern over the scandal than they are now, assuming they even covered the case at all.

None of this will stop tattoo enthusiasts from continuing to request designs explicitly tied to fallible artists and celebrities, O’Mahony says. “You look at a lot of public figures that are adored from like the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, a vast majority of them have done objectionable things,” he points out. “People aren’t [necessarily] attached to the person. They’re attached to the idea the person represents.” Perhaps you could say that even while Gaiman is seeing his TV and movie adaptation deals canceled, and bookstores are weighing the idea of pulling his titles off the shelves, the fans most passionate about his fantasy worlds can’t erase him from existence in quite the same way. After all, he changed their lives — and the proof is right there for anyone to see.

Well it wasn't in a good way he did. The darkness he emphasized is all that's wrong with modern storytelling, seeing how it's become such a sad staple in only so many places, along with other forms of wokeness. And he's never shown any remorse for corrupting and sullying the entertainment landscape with his overrated tales. This article does hint one of the most notable audiences Gaiman appealed to was punk subculture, and that's but one of the most annoying things about his resume.

RS isn't the only news source that's taken a double-standard by dragging Rowling into the whole mess. Popverse's Chris Arrant did something similar when he addressed the scandal:

"I never saw that side of Neil."

That's something we can all relate to. While we all have varying degrees of connection to Gaiman, the sexual assault allegations were compounded with the more recent reporting that some of the reported instances was done in the presence of one of his children. That added detail brings a whole other sense of dread and revulsion, especially for those with children - and even for those like me who don't have children, but have just simple empathy.

Neil Gaiman was the second author I ever dealt with professionally as a journalist. I was researching a story regarding a 'rumor' (which turned out to be fan speculation) of a specific new project he was working on with Marvel Comics. Using some sleuthing, I obtained his direct contact info and reached out - and surprisingly, he responded within the same day. A series of emails were exchanged, and I found the answers I needed to form the basis of the story.

That was a formative experience for me after becoming a fan of his work in the '90s, and it and further interactions as a journalist didn't refute that. But, as Tori Amos inferred, I didn't know all of Neil - and I certainly knew much less than Amos did. As a fan of someone I can never begin to truly know all the sides of someone; as a journalist, the same also applies.

In all of this, what it boils down to is a matter of trust: trust given to him by his friends and family, as well as those who work with him, and those who are (or were) fans of his work; even those of us who had professional dealings with Gaiman while also maintaining an appreciation for his work. Even if its a trust Gaiman didn't consciously give to me, it was a trust I bestowed that was later violated. Is the answer to never trust any celebrity again? That may seem drastic, but I'm finding more and more than you can bestow positive feelings on a celebrity figure without trust being among them.

As I've been prone to saying after previous things like this, just because I'm a fan of someone's work doesn't mean I'd trust them taking care of my cats. That's not that trust has been removed and they're no longer trustworthy to me, but in effect, trust is earned.

While it may be possible to separate the art from the artist and retain some modicum of enjoyment for Gaiman's work, I have not been able to do that. Through allegations against Warren Ellis, the facts surrounding J.K. Rowling, the flagrant actions of Mel Gibson, and going further back to the deeds of Woody Allen, I find myself giving less and less fucks. While I can admit that their works of which I was a fan of remain 'good' works in my mind, actions like these rob me of my ability to enjoy them, or even find them palatable at all.

Looks like Mr. Arrant's the 2nd person I know who's dragging an actual victim into the whole mess, along with veteran actor/director Allen, who was, at least for a few years, unfairly accused of sexual assault even though he had originally been cleared of wrongdoing by courts in the 90s, and no other known accusations ever turned up against him to date. Some performers have now expressed regret they tried to blacklist him. If there's no concrete evidence to support accusations against Allen, then to keep up this charade amounts to nothing more than absurd virtue-signaling. Arrant then asks:

What do I do with my Neil Gaiman books, and how do I engage with future works of theirs - or new adaptations of their works? The quick answer is to put it all in the bin and not to think about it. For me, though, I think its important to find a healthy way to engage and continue to write about things - not avoiding the difficult, but find a way to be able to communicate about it and all the facets of it.

Well at least he's not condoning book burnings, because something that nasty doesn't doesn't aid the situation any more than Gaiman's abominations. And amazing Arrant's willing to acknowledge that the whole notion Gaiman would commit his horrific acts while his infant son was present is also sickening. And on the subject of his children, Distractify notes that a daughter of his was named after a drag queen! Truly stupefying.

And I notice NPR's Glen Weldon is commenting on the scandal, about where he'll go from here as a "fan", and not very convincingly:

While we don't know whether these disturbing allegations are true, learning of them naturally leads to a deeply personal, complicated question: How do we deal with allegations about artists whose work we admire — even revere?

I should note: It's a complicated question for most of us. It's not remotely complicated for those who rush to social media to declare that they never truly liked the creator's work in the first place, or that they always suspected them, or that the only possible response for absolutely everyone is to rid themselves of the now-poisoned art that, before learning of the allegations against the creator, they loved so dearly.

Nor is it complicated for those who will insist that a creator's personal life has no bearing on how we choose to respond to their work, and that the history of art is a grim, unremitting litany of monstrous individuals who created works of enduring, inviolate beauty.

From this, it doesn't sound so much like he's willing to reevaluate whether the stories were any good to begin with, so much as whether he should keep it or trash it. What was so "beautiful" about Gaiman's work? The 14th and 17th Sandman issues, in example, were most definitely not, and as I said before, the way they were written was defeatist. There was one part early in the series that showed a character urinating on a wall. How is that "lovely"? Stuff like that is embarrassingly crude. Even his Marvel stories had distasteful elements. By the way, who's "we"? Assuming Weldon's a male feminist himself, doesn't he think we should "believe all women"? Is he questioning how several women who didn't know each other have come forward, and the case has reached critical mass? Tsk tsk. I vaguely remember one of the first issues had the caption, "listen" featured a few times. Tragically, Gaiman failed to do the same for any victim who protested his horrific assaults on them.

Most of us, however, will find ourselves mired in the hand-wringing of the in-between. We'll make individual, case-by-case choices, we'll cherry-pick from the art, we'll envision ourselves, in years ahead, sampling lightly from the salad bar of the artist's collected works, and feeling a little lousy about it.

Closing the door on an artist's future work

Here's my personal approach, whenever allegations come out about an artist whose work is important to me: I see the moment I learned of them as an inflection point. From that very instant, it's on me. The knowledge of the allegations will color their past works, when and if I choose to revisit them in the future. It won't change how those works affected me back then, and there's no point in pretending it will. But my newfound understanding of the claims can and will change how those works affect me today, and tomorrow.

To put that in practical perspective: If I own any physical media of their past work, I feel free to revisit it, while leaving plenty of room for the new allegations to color my impressions. But as for any future work — that's a door I'm only too willing to shut.

Take Gaiman. I have written and podcasted extensively on how Gaiman's The Sandman unlocked something in me — a love of big swing storytelling, of grand mythic themes and characters grounded in the everyday, of locating magic in the mundane. Should I ever go back and pull those graphic novels down from the shelf, I will remember my younger self marveling at how a series that began as a grisly little horror comic – one so indebted to the works of Stephen King that it felt usurious — could transform into an epic tale that used anthropomorphic representations of abstract concepts like Dream, Death and Desire to grapple with all-too human issues of family, alienation, guilt and duty. The act of reading it was like witnessing an artist shaking off his adolescent influences and finding his own, quietly assured voice.

That will never change. But with my understanding of the allegations so far, my giving him or his future work thought and attention — and, crucially, money — will change. It will end. A second season of Netflix's adaptation of The Sandman appears to be on the way, and I loved pretty much everything about the first. But I will be stepping away.

It's an arbitrary distinction, I admit. But choosing the moment I learned of the allegations against Gaiman as the dividing line between engaging with him and not is, importantly, a choice. It feels declarative, in a small way. The very tiniest of flags, firmly planted.

If he's willing to revisit Gaiman's earlier writings, he's not reevaluating. And based on the following, he's merely virtue-signaling:

I did the same thing with J.K. Rowling. Now, I was never as deeply connected to her work as I was with Gaiman's, but once she took to Twitter to launch into her weirdly spirited campaign against the idea that trans women are women, I decided she didn't need my support, going forward. The Hogwarts Legacy game sure looks fun, from the clips I see on TikTok. And I'd idly wondered if a trip to the Harry Potter theme park to score myself a wand might be worthwhile. But engaging with those properties could mean putting even more money into her pocket and represent an explicit affirmation of her rancorous positions. And for me, forgoing a game or a ride or a wand-choosing-the-wizard experience simply doesn't amount to anything like a sacrifice; it's almost literally the least I can do.

This is getting to be like a case of "3 strikes and you're out". Sounds like this leftist disgrace hasn't a care in the world that Rowling was a victim of sexual assault herself, and no respect for science and biology either. He doesn't even clearly explain what was so great about the Sandman series, or any other Gaiman writings, for that matter. I'm not convinced Weldon's saying anything he does altruistically. If he wanted to, I'm sure he could've spotted something wrong a mile away with Gaiman. But he was one of a shipload of real life J. Jonah Jamesons who's devoted much of his career to taking apart cohesion of moral values, and couldn't write his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag. Weldon once again comes off as nothing more than a virtue-signaler who's not willing to ask whether he's doing the right thing, and his attack on Rowling only proves he doesn't have what it takes to defend women's dignity. As far as "guilt" is concerned, he evidences none of that. Or, he shows no signs of Buyer's Remorse when it comes to Gaiman's Sandman series, and I doubt he'll do that in the years to come. "A little lousy"? Sure. Also note how Weldon's willing to make use of a social media site owned by China's commies that may be unavailable for a while now in the USA. Let's also consider that from this point onward, Gaiman's career is pretty much over, and no further books are likely to be published or adapted. So it's pretty laughable for Weldon to say he'll keep the past writings on his shelves while avoiding future ones. Weldon's little more than a cure for insomnia, and he owes Rowling an apology.

Inverse says there's just no good way to adapt Gaiman's writings anymore, but they make the same flub, and at the beginning:

“Works belong to the fans, not the artists” has been the rallying cry when creators get “canceled.” There is an argument for that, as stories can grow and morph through fan works even after a project is released. However, there are exceptions to that rule. For example, even though the Harry Potter fandom has outgrown J.K. Rowling and her transphobic views, HBO is still planning to adapt her books into a series, and in doing so, they put more money into her pocket and indirectly condone her behavior.

Groan. This obsession with dragging Rowling into the mess is getting tiresome already, and again puts the sincerity of the columnists in doubt. Still, what's the following they say later on:

But despite those consequences, Gaiman still has multiple projects in the works. Season 2 of The Sandman is expected to premiere on Netflix sometime this year, and Prime Video is adapting his 2005 novel Anansi Boys into a miniseries. Both of these projects have wrapped filming, but at this point, it may be best to cut the losses — and ties with Gaiman — and shelve the shows entirely.

I don't expect them to receive high ratings after New York Magazine's expose, and for now, the network will probably release them with little fanfare in the end. And for the millionth time, what's so special about dark stories with grisly elements? Nobody's asking what should be a challenging query.

A writer at Vox also commented, and comments on how another male feminist has been unmasked:

The faux-feminist man who is accused of being a secret predator is by now, after the revelations of the Me Too movement, a familiar figure. A few years ago, when Me Too was raging through Hollywood, former liberal darlings Louis C.K. and Joss Whedon saw their whole legacies re-evaluated after being accused of sexual misconduct on C.K.’s part and bullying on Whedon’s. (Whedon has denied all the allegations.) Now, two new famous feminist men have been accused of gendered misconduct — but these revelations come at a moment when our culture appears to be far less interested in performing a reckoning.

The most serious of the new stories are the accusations against Neil Gaiman, a prolific and beloved figure in the fantasy and comic book world. Gaiman built his career on the idea that he was an ally to women, but last year, a podcast from the UK-based Tortoise Media accused him of physical and emotional abuse and sexual assault. Now, those claims have been amplified by a deeply reported and detailed feature in New York magazine alleging that Gaiman abused multiple vulnerable young women over whom he was in a position of power. Gaiman, in a post on his website, maintains that his relationships with these women were consensual.

In other words, Gaiman just followed Whedon's example, albeit much more horrifically, and now stands to lose everything, deservedly.

The accusations against Gaiman are much more serious and violent than the accusations against Baldoni. Yet both men find themselves in the same familiar place we saw with other faux feminists. They built their public images on being “the good ones” in a misogynistic world: men who understood that other men were violent and untrustworthy, who seemed committed to doing the best they could not to fall into the same traps. Now, they stand accused of using those long-crafted images as public shields for their private misbehavior.

This sounds like an attempt to slam men in general, rather than argue whether education is poor for both men and women in terms of how to act civilly. That kind of ambiguous rhetoric is exactly what's wrong with feminism from a leftist viewpoint.

The question that remains is: What will happen to the feminist men who lose their feminist cred in this time of Me Too backlash? What was all that feminist capital worth to begin with?

Was it even altruistic to begin with? That's a query nobody seems interested in figuring out.

In his fiction, Gaiman appeared to be at least trying to walk the walk. He populated his books with powerful women who don’t suffer fools. He tackled subjects like sexual violence at a time when they felt taboo.

Even Gaiman’s fans could acknowledge that for all his effort, he wasn’t always all that good at writing women — he seemed reluctant to center them in most of his stories and was always writing detailed descriptions of their breasts. Still, most readers agreed that he was well-intentioned.

No, on the contrary, he was being soft on crime in his stories, as both the 14th and 17th Sandman issues strongly suggested, but nobody thinks to take a closer look to consider that. Why, if memory serves, when Morpheus prevented the obese rapist/killer from sexually assaulting the girl in the former, Dream said she belongs to no one, "except perhaps to herself." And just what did Gaiman mean by "perhaps"? It's like he couldn't help but slip in a stealth contradiction, implying he didn't really uphold respecting a woman's personal agency. No wonder the story hasn't aged well.

In this version of the story, Gaiman is no longer the male feminist trying his best and now and then falling short of perfection. No longer is he a man “doing what he can, both personally and in society, to improve things.” Instead, he is allegedly implicating his own son in acts of sexual violence. And he is using his male feminist persona not just as a shield but as bait.

This is why he must be kept far away from children in the forseeable future. Even Palmer will have a lot to answer for. What Gaiman did to his son was offensive in the extreme, and a humiliation to parenthood. This scandal must go to court.

Next, here's a writer at the New Statesman, another somebody who'd once been familiar with Gaiman, and is now disturbed by the revelations:

To get this photo, I volunteered to steward the event. My hope was that standing around for hours shepherding the endless line of people who wanted their books signed might grant me a few minutes at the end to tell Gaiman how much his books meant to me, how important they had been to the formation of my adolescent identity, how there were moments as an angsty teenager when I felt his words were all that was holding me together. It did. I got my photo, and my snatched two minutes of tongue-tied conversation. I told him I had no idea what I was doing and sometimes wondered if I’d ever figure things out. In my copy of American Gods, tattered to the point of destruction by dozens of rereadings, he wrote in red ink “Rachel, Believe!”

I don’t know how to reconcile that memory, that photo, with Lila Shapiro’s disturbing piece about Gaiman, published in the latest issue of New York Magazine. Over 10,000 words she alleges that Gaiman abused several women in incidents that span multiple decades, and claims that he used his fame to pressure vulnerable young women into non-consensual and violent sex. Gaiman denies the allegations and insists the incidents described were instances of BDSM sex between consenting adults.

Among other things, the investigation explores how some women may reframe traumatic incidents as consensual as a defence mechanism. It raises the question of how consensual a violent power dynamic can truly be when the dominant partner is a multi-millionaire superstar author in his sixties, and the submissive partner is a broke babysitter in her early twenties. In a lengthy statement posted to his website, Gaiman said that the New York Magazine piece described “moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”

The allegations against Gaiman have sent shockwaves through his fanbase – even a sense of betrayal. The sci-fi and fantasy writer is perhaps best known for the comic-book series The Sandman, and his novels Good Omens and American Gods. The Ocean at the End of the Lane won Book of the Year in the 2013 British National Book Awards. In 2015, Gaiman guest-edited an issue of the New Statesman magazine. He championed the rights of refugees, women and LGBTQ+ people on social media. He was celebrated as a feminist hero among many of his readers for his fiction’s depictions of vulnerable women.

But did anybody ever notice the lenient approach he took to the evil figures seen in the 14th and 17th Sandman stories, in example? I just don't comprehend how that never occurred to anybody years before. Speaking of refugees, if he sides with illegal immigration, including Islamofascists infiltrating once safe countries with civilized values, that's disturbing too. In fact, where were pseudo-feminists like Gaiman during the Rotherham scandal? Today, he's disqualified himself from commenting regardless.

And he was married to Amanda Palmer, the punk cabaret musician known for her raw, confessional music and the intimacy she cultivated with her fans. She would talk and sing openly about her own experiences with sexual assault. The online community she built was a safe space for recovering survivors, who found catharsis in her lyrics. One of her better-known songs, “Oasis”, describes a woman getting an abortion after being date-raped at a party. When she married Gaiman in 2011, their fanbases merged and an air of chaotic bohemian romance settled around them. For a decade, the couple had a kind of cult status for angsty nerdy misfit kids – and then angsty nerdy misfit adults – like me. There’s a photo of 22-year-old me with Palmer too: snapped in the aftermath of a gig, when she started playing impromptu ukelele songs on the steps of the theatre, straight after I told her how her music had helped me.

But before I ever heard her music I fell in love with his words. I discovered Gaiman’s books when I was at my most impressionable. I’d traipse across London following the path of Neverwhere; the first sex scenes I ever read were from American Gods. Of course, I was hardly alone in the pedestal I placed him on. Unusually for an author, let alone a sci-fi and fantasy author, Gaiman had rock-star status among readers in the 2000s and 2010s. One woman flew to the Cambridge book-signing from the US. She wasn’t a student, but a fan, desperate to see him in the flesh.

There was no shortage of women who would have volunteered to have consensual BDSM affairs with Neil Gaiman. The allegations in Shapiro’s piece describe something different: deliberate abuse of power, of degradation, where the thrill is not in the depravity of the acts themselves but seemingly in forcing them on someone unwilling but unable to say no, then goading them into retrospectively reframing their reluctance as enjoyment. Anyone in the kink community will tell you that an experience of such a nature is not BDSM, that any pressure or ambiguity over consent automatically turns risqué play into straight-up abuse.

The way Gaiman wrote his characters, you felt sure that he knew the difference between the two. As a teenager who felt damaged and broken and uniquely alone in the darkness (as all teenagers do), I remember how his books felt so safe. Which is odd, because there is nothing safe about them. The books, short stories and Sandman comics are full of disturbing scenes of sexual violence – men who dehumanise and brutalise women, men who fetishise little girls, men whose innermost desires have twisted them up inside and turned them into monsters. Yet it never seemed gratuitous, never seemed akin to the mindless torture porn in the likes of Game of Thrones. “Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy,” writes Shapiro. Yes, but it was more than empathy. Somehow it felt like whatever you might have suffered, he was on your side.

Today, it's clear he never was. But the comics he wrote weren't gratuitous? That's disputable, considering there were several very violent moments that were alienating, and gave adult entertainment a bad name. Now, since we're on the subject of Rowling, the Times of India says she's had what to say about Gaiman's non-apology:

JK Rowling took another dig at British author Neil Gaiman on Wednesday after the rape accused released a statement denying the sexual harassment allegations by eight women.

"Grok, show me an example of DARVO," wrote Rowling on X, sharing a screenshot of Gaiman's statement on the rape charges.

What is DARVO?

DARVO, which stands for 'Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender,' is a manipulative tactic that abusers may employ to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and to discredit their victims. This tactic involves denying any wrongdoing, attacking the credibility of the survivor, and reversing the roles of victim and offender.

When using DARVO, the abuser may claim that they have not done anything wrong and instead portray themselves as the victim of abuse. This role reversal can create confusion and make it challenging for others to determine the truth.

By employing this tactic, abusers aim to shift the blame onto the survivor and avoid facing the consequences of their actions. DARVO can be a powerful tool for manipulation, as it can cause survivors to doubt their own experiences and make it more difficult for them to seek support or justice.

The late Canadian author Alice Munro's 2nd husband, Gerald Fremlin, did something like that to her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner, and it's definitely offensive. Shame on Gaiman for pulling that act too.

Now, from Yahoo Life, they've commented on the subject of celebrities betraying the trust of fans, and at the end, there's the query of whether we can separate the art from the artist:

Many fans grapple with the question of whether they can still enjoy the work of their former favourite artist or celebrity without supporting or condoning their behaviour.

Beedon says that the process of separating the art from the artist is "deeply personal", with no right or wrong way of doing so.

"One strategy is to reflect on why the artist’s work resonates with you - is it the themes they touch on, characters they portray, or moral messages they deliver?" she says. "By focusing on these elements, you might find it easier to appreciate the art independently of the person behind it."

But many people feel conflicted about continuing to engage with an artist’s work - particularly if they stand to profit from it. In this case, Beedon advises setting personal boundaries.

"You might choose to enjoy their work without financially contributing to them, or you may decide to step away altogether. Whatever your choice, it should align with your values and comfort level."

She adds: "Ultimately, navigating this situation requires compassion - for yourself, for others grappling with similar feelings, and for the complexity of human imperfection."

A better question can be whether the "art" in focus was any good to begin with. At least a few of the scribes I know of in comicdom who've been accused of sexual misconduct, like Gerard Jones, seemed more interested in pushing leftist agendas along with their disturbing stealth sexual references than in actually turning out something intelligent. Those stories, for the most part, were pretty bankrupt creatively, and Gaiman's are little different. A writer at USA Today raised the issue too, while noting that she'll have a hard time watching Coraline again:

He is far from the first admired celebrity to be accused of sexual abuse, and it can be painful for fans to learn that a notable figure may not be who they thought they were. After taking it all in, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “How can I watch 'Coraline' again?”

The article was meant to be uncomfortable. Why?

Graphic recounts of sexual abuse grab — and hold onto — readers' attention.

Nicole Bedera, author of "On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence," says most readers are responding in a similar way, which is by asking themselves, “Is this bad enough that I have to stop being a fan of this man?”

IMHO, yes, it's that bad, and even before what's known about Gaiman came to light, I don't see what all the fuss was about regarding his comics and books.

“That’s part of why a lot of journalists will write these articles to be so graphic,” she explains. “Because if they’re not graphic, people are pretty quick to separate the art from the artist and try to keep supporting this person.”

On this, the main problem is that, if the offender is being paid residual bonuses for sales of the product, that's why it's a bad idea to continue making purchases that can put money in his pocket.

And Bedera cautions that graphic recounts can sensationalize sexual violence and raise the bar for what people consider to be violent enough to withdraw their support.

In her research on college sexual violence perpetrators, she found that school officials were less likely to intervene on violence that seemed more ordinary. “They would say things like, ‘He’s no Harvey Weinstein,’” she explains.

And, misogynistic fans can create a cult-like following behind celebrities who are accused of shocking violence.

“If you’re responding with disgust, there are misogynistic readers who are responding with awe, and that’s how that new fandom can be created,” Bedera says.

Can you separate art from the artist?

The short and clear answer is no, Bedera says.

Most certainly not when the work was pretentious and gruesome to begin with. As for universities with lenience, good grief, could these be the same ones that allow anti-Israel violence to run rampant? Well, if racism can rule a roost, it only figures misogyny can too, and vice versa.

Bedera recommends people look to other creators the artist has worked with and even their victims, who sometimes are artists themselves. In diverting your attention and financial resources from the person who has been accused of abuse, you can “help keep this person from becoming more powerful and maybe chip away at the power they already have."

For me, my connection to “Coraline” was never about Gaiman himself. When I first watched the film 15 years ago, I’m not sure I even knew it was based on his book.

So it’s unlikely that I’ll burn my copy of “Coraline” or delete the photos posing with my pink and yellow birthday cake — the damage has already been done.

But the next time “Coraline” returns to theaters, as it has the past two summers, I’ll save the $20, and stop convincing all my friends to go with me.

Outlook asked the questions too:

The allegations against the famed fantasy writer raise a fundamental question: What to do when a filmmaker or a theatre personality whose work I am fond of and who has been accused of sexual misconduct by using their positions of power—the fame of an artist—releases a new work, while victims continue to fight for justice? Should I boycott the movie/play then?

Again, this is particularly necessary if we don't want to finance the felon. And if you want a perspective of Coraline itself that's eyebrow raising, try this item at Vigilant Citizen, which points out how it builds on allusions to sadism, and one of the commenters asks: "And what of the white balloons in the garden at the end? Is this a symbol of sexual abuse victims?" And this all first came up 11 years ago! As a result, those who looked into this film stumbled onto something without realizing it, to be sure. That aside, somebody needs to ask the onetime fans of these movies what's so special about darkness in their minds?

However, when Overland addressed the issue, they said at the end:

The horrifying violence and abuse that Scarlett Pavlovich describes is not the result of an individual man’s monstrosity. It isn’t even the result of some innate, absolving, universal “human nature”. Scarlett Pavlovich endured what she endured because capitalism in New Zealand worked hard to make sure that she did. A rich man can rape a poor woman in a bathtub and, in some way, get some twisted satisfaction from doing so. But the rich — all of the rich, every last one — directly financially benefit from having built a world in which poor women have no choice but to submit to being raped. This misogynist violence is the premise of capitalist society, and ending that violence will require us to end capitalism.

Oh, for crying out loud. Scapegoating capitalism will not solve these problems. That's not what led to this terrible case. It's leftism run amok, and this item otherwise ignores that Gaiman's one of the most boilerplate leftists around. To act like socialism's throughly incapable of bad influence doesn't help matters. But, one can only wonder what the writer thinks of say, George Soros, considering how wealthy he is. Ross Douthat at the NY Times makes a somewhat better argument:

No, where the system breaks down, when bad things happen, it’s because of a failure to establish appropriate parameters, or a refusal to abide by the therapeutic rules — even when, as with the allegations against Gaiman, the entire surrounding story underscores just how hard it can be to constrain a predator’s behavior or litigate the murky landscape of power and desire.

I think what's really needed is better education, and to convincingly oppose these religious cults that've only resulted in these atrocious failures of morality.

We Got This Covered says his former fans aren't buying his shoddy defenses:

We should feel very sorry for Neil Gaiman‘s legions of devoted fans. For decades they thought they were championing a kind, supportive, feminist ally who regularly delivered imaginative, impressive gothic fantasies. Everything, from his writing to his online activity to his social circle, painted a picture of a genuinely lovely person.

Except maybe his social media posts, which could be pretty alienating, IMHO. And his fantasy tales were not impressive, because of how vapid they actually were. Yet nobody listened to any of the Cassandras who tried to point this out, until Gaiman was discovered doing something terrible behind the scenes.

Over the last six months that facade has come crashing down. First came a series of podcasts detailing Gaiman’s questionable sexual behavior, but this week’s publication of a lengthy exposé in New York Magazine drawn from the direct testimony of his alleged victims has left jaws on the floor. We won’t go into the precise nature of their stories here, but the general response has been shock, disgust, and outright horror.

Most of Gaiman’s predominantly liberal, feminist fanbase disowned him overnight. Signed books have been tossed in recycling, graphic novels donated to Goodwill, and we only have sympathy for those stuck with tattoos of his characters. [...]

It’s difficult to see a way back from this for Gaiman. The best-case scenario is that somehow his production partners in Netflix and Amazon shrug their shoulders and continue producing The Sandman and various other adaptations of his work. However, given the shocking nature of these women’s stories, we suspect some executives are mulling over writing off what’s already been spent as a tax break.

As for his future literary career? Well, if his fans are actively destroying the Gaiman novels they already own, it seems unlikely they’ll be rushing out to buy new ones. Though many would like to see criminal charges brought against him and compensatory payments to his alleged victims, it would ultimately be best for Gaiman and his work to simply fade away into obscurity. Here’s hoping karma is real.

Well considering the gravity of the accusations, that's why a court case would be recommended. Trouble is, as I realize, these "celebrities" are wealthy enough to hire lawyers who can keep the cases from reaching a hearing for years. The court of public opinion, however, can be a greater form of punishment. And it's to be hoped more people who've taken note of the news will be voting with their wallets and not buying Gaiman's overrated tommyrot anymore.

And Slate's talking about the end of male feminists, if Gaiman's crimes signal it:

And so Gaiman joins an ignominious crew of famous men whose work and statements seemed to align with women against sexist oppression in public, even as they allegedly assaulted, harassed, or otherwise mistreated women in private. This pathway is now so well trodden as to have become a trope: the male feminist who deeply, appallingly wasn’t.

At the height of #MeToo, these guys were everywhere. There was Louis C.K., who made searching, seemingly self-aware work that scrutinized gender relations and male sexual entitlement. And yet, several women have said that he masturbated in front of them without their permission or otherwise sexually harassed them. There was Aziz Ansari, who made sensitive, thoughtful comedy about heterosexual dating—and reportedly tried to pressure a woman into sexual contact with unceasing persistence after she repeatedly resisted. Then there was Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general who sued Harvey Weinstein’s company for creating a “toxic environment.” Months later, four women accused Schneiderman of physical violence, often during sex. (Schneiderman, like Gaiman, said he was practicing consensual BDSM.)

[...] When a man who seems generally enlightened in public is alleged to have mistreated women in private, there is a sense among his fans of having been duped. The reaction to such allegations is often accompanied by a question: Were his feminist bona fides part of the reason his accusers trusted him in the first place? No matter how many men like Gaiman are hit with troubling allegations, it’s still hard for supporters of male “feminist” creators to internalize that speaking out against gender inequities doesn’t preclude a man from being a jerk—or even a serial rapist.

There doesn't seem to be a sense among leftists that liberal ideology may be impeding upon the ability of these male feminists to recognize why abusive behavior is wrong. And, they seem too obsessed with railing against Donald Trump to be seriously concerned about sexism on the left side, as the following hints:

The adulation of male feminists has quieted a bit over the past several years, partly due to the rising intensity of threats to women’s lives in the Trump era. (Hearing a man say that women deserve equal treatment just doesn’t hit like it used to.) The label of feminist itself has also lost some of its currency. For a time, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, there was an fixation on getting celebrities to say whether they were feminists. Their answers could power entire news cycles. That black-and-white framing has, thankfully, mostly evaporated in popular discourse. Trump’s rise showed many progressive white women the error in approaching feminism as a narrow, single-issue movement having to do with gender alone. And the term began losing the thread when right-wing conservatives who oppose abortion access and promote traditional gender roles began calling themselves feminists.

If they think conservatives are far more of a problem than liberal male feminists, it's no wonder the problem of male pseudo-feminists will never be solved.

Per the Milkshake Duck meme and the admonition to “never meet your idols,” there is a broad understanding in adult society that human beings (and ducks) are complicated. They often hurt others—some number of them hurt others in particularly monstrous ways. The male “feminist,” as a figure of wish fulfillment in the search for a better world, has circumvented the natural skepticism people might otherwise have about public figures. Fan culture plays into this too: The world of comic cons and fan sites that Gaiman inhabits encourages obsessive parasocial relationships with media creators. In that milieu, it can be hard to remember that the public image of a celebrity is just a carefully crafted facade designed for maximum monetary gain. No matter what they post or how they write, we don’t really know these people at all.

And by the end of the decade, Gaiman will likely have been reduced to but a tedious footnote.

Labels: golden calf of LGBT, history, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics

Superhero Hype announced what DC, in example, is offering for Free Comic Book Day, including one dark item and another that omits a certain notable Green Lantern from the Silver Age:

This Absolute Universe story will be written by Jeff Lemire, with art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Nesi. Set in this particularly dark DC alternate reality, the story will center around a gathering evil. [M]eanwhile, a mysterious figure with unclear intentions reveals an interest in the new Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman of this reality. [...]

In addition to the DC All-In/Absolute Universe special, DC is offering two books aimed at young readers. The first is a special Free Comic Book Day preview of Superman’s Good Guy Gang. The new graphic novel, aimed at early readers ages 5-7, features a script and art by Rob Justus. The story will find a young Superman trying to form a team with Hawkgirl and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner. The full book goes on sale July 1, 2025.

It's appalling they continue to perpetuate the culture of darkness, and while I think Guy Gardner's got potential as a character if written well, it's becoming laughable at this point how GLs like him are being cast in these stories instead of Hal Jordan. The choice reeks of editorial mandate, and it's regrettable how Hal continues to be marginalized. All that aside, I wouldn't be fooled into taking home the items from DC/Marvel as they stand today, and hope there's independent publishers with something better to offer, and that includes stuff that's more optimistic.

Labels: dc comics, Green Lantern, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, sales

The Hollywood Reporter says the dreadful writer who wrote a whole worthless decade of Spider-Man, including the part where Peter Parker was mind-switched with Dr. Octopus, is now moving over to DC to work on a Superman book that's apparently tied in with the new direction for the movies:

Dan Slott, the Eisner-winning writer who has been the guiding force for Spider-Man stories at Marvel Comics for close to 15 years, has gone across the street to DC.

Slott, who has been signed to an exclusive contract with Marvel since the late aughts, will make his DC debut with Superman Unlimited, writing the monthly comic that will be drawn by Rafael Albuquerque, the artist and co-creator of the award-winning horror comic American Vampire. DC announced the news Thursday.

The title will be a driving force in a company-wide initiative named “Summer of Superman” that ties into James Gunn’s Superman film. The inaugural feature from Warner Bros. Discovery arm DC Studios opens July 11. [...]

The comic will kick off with a hook of cosmic proportions: a Kryptonite asteroid showers Earth with the mineral that weakens the man of Steel, changing the balance of power in criminal empires in Metropolis and the planet. “To survive, Superman will need to forge new alliances, new tech and new tactics if he hopes to carry on his quest for truth, justice and a better tomorrow!” the announcement exclaimed.

Well. It sounds like they're perpetuating the work of previous modern propagandists, forcibly jettisoning the use of The American Way slogan for the sake of one they're unlikely to prove capable of providing a convincing direction for. IGN says the following about the premise:

“We just launched Justice League Unlimited in the fall, and Mark Waid and Dan Mora are telling a tale of unlimited Super Heroes in that ongoing series,” continued Kaminski. “In contrast, Slott and Albuquerque’s Superman Unlimited is a tale of unlimited Super-Villains that are super-charged by Kryptonite. Green K is everywhere. Superman is going to need to get to work and adapt to survive. Every line of Dan’s pitch is packed with surprises and every line Rafa draws is stunning… 2025 is truly going to be Superman UNLIMITED.”

It won't be shocking if villains get a huge emphasis here, in a way that amounts to little more than cheap celebration. Also notice the artist is known for penning a horror comic. That's not exactly a great fit for the optimism the Man of Steel was once built upon, before all the woke pandering of recent brought it down in the worst ways possible. When a writer as bad as Slott is at the wheel, one can only expect something worthless.

When writers and aritsts like these are at the helm, the year won't be a good one for Superman.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful artists, dreadful writers, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Superman

The Washington Post reports that cartoonist Darrin Bell, who's drawn for their paper and has 2 daily comic strips to his credits, was arrested for possession of child porn:

Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist Darrin Bell was arrested Wednesday in California on charges of possession of child pornography, some of which was allegedly generated by artificial intelligence, police said.

Bell, 49, was arrested at his home and booked into Sacramento County jail after police discovered more than 100 videos related to child sex abuse connected to an account that Bell owned and controlled.

According to the Sacramento County sheriff’s office, detectives from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program previously received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about someone who had uploaded 18 files containing child sex abuse material, or child pornography. After an investigation into the tip, the detectives discovered 134 videos of that material uploaded by an account owned and controlled by Bell.

On Wednesday, police issued a residential search warrant at Bell’s home, where they discovered evidence related to the case, including “computer-generated/AI” child pornography, according to the sheriff’s office.

[...] This was the first arrest by the Sacramento Valley’s Internet Crimes Against Children detectives unit related to possession of AI-generated content since a new California law ordered possession of AI-generated content to be deemed a criminal offense, according to the sheriff’s office.

Whatever one thinks of even AI, that Mr. Bell would wallow in such abominable smut is horrific and offensive. His possession of illegal videos definitely warrants an arrest and prosecution, and let's hope he goes to prison for a long time.

One of Bell’s more notable works is “Candorville,” a daily comic strip that features young Black and Latino characters living in a city. Collections of the nationally syndicated comic strip, which often offers social and political commentary, have been published as books. He also cocreated “Rudy Park,” a syndicated comic strip no longer in production that focused on current events.

“Candorville,” which appears on The Post’s website and in its daily and Sunday editions and is syndicated by King Features, has been suspended from the comics lineup for the time being. The strip will appear in the Jan. 19 Sunday comics section because of production deadlines.

Counterpoint Media said in a statement Thursday that Bell has been suspended from contributing to its daily newsletter. But reruns of “Rudy Park” would continue to be distributed for now.

They should cancel further publication of his daily strips, and nobody should buy the reprints. We must hope his publishers are dropping his work from reprints already. And now, here's clues to his politics:

Bell got his start at the University of California at Berkeley, where he drew cartoons for the school’s newspaper, the Daily Californian.

He became the first Black journalist to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2019. His winning cartoons that year “took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration,” according to the Pulitzer Prizes.

In 2023, Bell created a visual memoir, called “The Talk,” which focused on how racial injustice and public moments in childhood can help shape adulthood. The book’s publisher, Macmillan, said in a statement Thursday it is “aware of the arrest of Darrin Bell. These are disturbing allegations, and we take this matter extremely seriously. At this time, we are allowing due process to take its course and will take appropriate action as we get more confirmed information.”

The Sacramento Bee also notes:

Pulitzer judges remarked on his “beautiful and daring editorial cartoons” that tackled the issues that affect the nation’s disenfranchised communities and took on the political turmoil that surrounded the first Trump administration.

And the Washington Free Beacon says:

In 2023, Bell published The Talk, a graphic memoir on "police brutality and anti-Blackness in twenty-first-century Amerikkka [sic]." Bell said the book was inspired by George Floyd’s death in 2020, telling ABC News that parents should "take away some innocence" from children by discussing racial issues in America.

And so, it turns out Mr. Bell's quite a leftist ideologue, who studied at a terrible institute with a far-left bent, and it won't be surprising if his comics and cartoons build on only so much leftist ideology, as his use of an allusion to anti-American ideology hints. Now, his career looks to be over, and he's only tarnished leftism so much more with his offenses. It's quite telling he wasted so much energy attacking Trump. The NY Post also notes that:

One troubling cartoon that Bell created was posted to his X account in 2022 and resurfaced on the social media platform after his arrest. Titled “The Groomer,” it shows an elephant-like person flashing a group of children in front of a mirrored storefront, which reflect the word “BIGOTRY” tattooed on the subject’s chest.

And the U.S. Sun has more:

Darrin Bell, 49, who amassed a mainstream audience for his drawings depicting Donald Trump as Hitler, has been accused of sharing over 100 disgusting AI-generated images of child sexual abuse.

[...] Bell was active on social media and spent most of his time posting his political work on his Substack, Darrin Bell's Disobey in Advance.

In one drawing he shared several times on Instagram, he depicted Trump as an Adolph Hitler-type figure standing at a podium for a speech.

On the podium, he drew an image that resembles the Nazi Party symbol, but instead of a swastika, there's a T turned to an angle.

In another illustration, Bell drew Trump having a meltdown over the poor performance of MAGA-endorsed politicians in the 2022 midterm elections.

In that cartoon, the artist depicted the so-called "Red Wave" as an exploded bottle of ketchup that painted a wall behind the screaming president.

At the time, fans couldn't get enough of Bell's drawings. One follower commented, "This is good. I laughed right out loud," on the comic of the president's childish tantrum.

However, now, Bell's arrest and smug attitude have earned him a wave of backlash, as outraged users flood his comments with calls for justice.

"Prison is so fitting for this guy. Don't mess with children," commented one furious user on a post.

Another person wrote, "It's staggering how you spent the past years calling Trump and his supporters rapists, groomers, and Nazis.

"Meanwhile, you were just arrested for creating and distributing child pornography."

And other users blasted Bell for "tarnishing" his work and his disturbing alleged crimes.

"Somebody needs to have a talk to their kids about perverts like you," wrote another furious follower.

Wow...the hypocrisy knows no bounds. He accused conservatives in his cartoons of being "groomers", yet saw nothing wrong with being a groomer himself? Sadly, there's only so many Orwellianists like him around, and they've really brought down morality to a deep abyss. Now, Bell's career is over, and he'll hopefully be facing prison for his atrocities that hurt children.

Labels: comic strips, misogyny and racism, moonbat artists, msm propaganda, politics, technology, violence

The company that once had a monopoly on comics distribution and seemed to be against competition, has released a Businesswire press announcement they're going bankrupt, and filing for Chapter 11:

Diamond Comic Distributors (“Diamond” or “the Company”), today announced that it has filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland to facilitate the restructuring of its business. As part of the restructuring process, Diamond has received a $39 million stalking horse bid from an affiliate of Universal Distribution (“Universal”) for Alliance Game Distributors.

The Company has received commitments for up to $41 million in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing from JP Morgan Chase that will be used to fund post-petition operating expenses and ensure adequate working capital to meet its obligations to associates and suppliers.

In addition to securing DIP financing, and a stalking horse bid for Alliance Game Distributors, Diamond has received strong interest in its specialized business divisions, having also entered into a Non-Binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with Universal to acquire Diamond UK. Diamond is actively pursuing offers for, and has received interest from potential purchasers for, its other business units, including Diamond Book Distributors, Collectible Grading Authority, and Diamond Select Toys, as well as its main comic, toy, and collectible distribution lines.

Given how pretentious their business was, and how quite a few insular ideologues acted as though the industry should solely rely upon them, they're really no loss, and something tells me they've been no help to the independent scene either. For all we know, what money they've received for restructuring probably won't avail in the end.

Most odd about this news, however, is the way some retailers are going about this, like Brian Hibbs of Comix Experience, who said: Now DC under Dan DiDio did some very bad things from an artistic perspective, but that's why to say they're guilty of where things are allegedly leading to in terms of the marketplace is awfully cheap, and besides, didn't Marvel originally precipitate this situation after they tried getting into the distribution business 3 decades before? Not to mention that, if Diamond was monopolizing the business and making it almost impossible to rely on more distribution services, that's wrong. So where does Mr. Hibbs get off scapegoating DC?

I suspect he's also unconcerned about the continued use of the pamphlet format as opposed to paperbacks and hardcovers, and if variant covers are still only so common, that's another issue the industry's not considering. There's a whole potential market for wall paintings out there, and instead of taking advantage of it, publishers continue to rely upon a format that's not being viewed publicly, apart from maybe online samples. But even that's farcical. If artists who care about the medium are serious, they'll start plying their trade for illustrated wall paintings of fantaasy figures, something I'm sure artists like Frank Frazetta did years before. As for Diamond, I think it'd do a lot of good if anybody complaining about their detractors would just consider even Diamond makes mistakes. And the comics medium has to stop relying on pamphlets and actually address that subject - specifically, whether they want pamphlets retired as a format or not.

Labels: dc comics, history, licensed products, marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales

Bay Today reported about a Canadian professor in Sudbury who's read comics in his youth, but now seems to think even characters like Wolverine are nothing more than vessels for "toxic masculinity":

Cambrian College professor Neil Shyminsky, a self-described “littlest kid in class” became obsessed in his youth with Wolverine, a reluctant hero in the X-men comic book series.

But it wasn’t until he went to university he decided that, perhaps, the mighty X-man he looked up to was not quite the role model he thought.

“There's no greater empowerment fantasy than the little guy with claws who can't be killed,” said Shyminsky with a laugh. “It wasn't until I reached university and took classes on feminism and gender studies that I realized that, in fact, might be feeding me something a little toxic.”

How exactly? Wolverine was far from violent towards innocent and defenseless women, gave coaching to ladies like Storm and Shadowcat, and he cared for a Japanese woman named Mariko Yashida, who wound up in an abusive marriage to a scummy husband in Japan, pushed into the marriage by her yakuza overlord father. I currently own a reprint paperback of the 4-part Wolverine miniseries from 1982 where this story was told, one of the earliest Marvel published back in the day, written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Frank Miller. I'm not sure what Mr. Shyminsky means if we're talking about Logan. The article continues, sans any objective view or queries:

It’s that idea of toxic masculinity that drove Shyminsky to begin studying and researching masculinity, and in particular, through the lens of comic books and graphic novels. Now, after taking these ideas to social media, the professor has almost one million followers across three platforms, with the most followers on TikTok: 400,000.

A Cambrian faculty member at the School of Justice, Community Services and General Studies, you can read some of his academic publications here, which include topics such as “Mutation, Racialization, Decimation: The X-Men as White Men,” and “Unmasking ‘Gay’ Sidekicks: Queer Anxiety and the Narrative Straightening of the Superhero.”

But it’s the idea of toxic masculinity that has gained Shyminsky the most traction with his followers.

‘Toxic masculinity’ is a relatively new phrase. While the concept has become controversial, with some believing it has connotations that reject all masculinity, the definition includes a masculinity that hurts others, including the man himself.

The term highlights a specific form of masculinity and a specific set of social expectations that could be seen as unhealthy or dangerous. For example, the idea that one should “man up” rather than show weakness.

And what does that mean? That when violent crime is around, you should show weakness and cowardice in the face of it? What are they thinking? This is certainly not promising so far, and that he makes use of a social media site that looks to have its circulation shut down in the USA because of its ties with China's communists speaks volumes.

According to an article in The Conversation, Queensland University professor Michael Flood states toxic masculinity is represented by qualities such as violence, dominance, emotional illiteracy, sexual entitlement, and hostility to femininity.

The limited studies available have shown that stereotypical masculine norms are bad for women, but especially, bad for men and boys.

As it so happens, yes of course violence is bad, but it's the aggressive and hostile type related to barbarism, racism, misogny and savagery that is, and the article is ambiguous on that part. Is acting in self-defense and to defend innocent women and children against violence wrong? Of course not. And yes, dominance is also bad, as is sexual entitlement of the kind Neil Gaiman wallowed in, along with hostility to femininity. But, does it literally make any sense that heterosexual men would be hostile to femininity? A big problem here is that Shyminsky most likely ignores the serious problem that sprung up in the past decade with transsexual ideology, which is hostile to femininity. And it's unlikely he has any worries about the Islamic religion's hostility to femininity either, unless we're referring to one of the examples cited below, yet at the same time, what's cites indicates he only considers allegedly right-wing figures a concern:

But rather than explore masculinity in all its forms, including the toxic kind, some have moved further into what they say are traditional gender roles, leading to the rise of what’s called “the Manosphere, said Flood, in another piece for The Conversation. With leaders like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and, primarily, Joe Rogan. According to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the "manosphere" refers to a wide variety of men’s groups operating on the internet and offline. Many describe themselves as fighting against progressive (or "woke") ideas about gender equality. Manosphere influencers often assert the unfounded idea that men are naturally dominant. They can even distort biology and evolution to argue that restrictive gender norms are natural.

A play on the pro-abortion motto, “my body, my choice,” the use of the slogan "your body, my choice," (popularized in part by podcaster, Nick Fuentes) jumped 4,600 per cent in 24 hours in the days following the Nov. 5, 2024, American presidential election, though some of that was due to people speaking out against it.

One of those was Neil Shyminsky.

[...] What began as a chance to discuss graphic novels and comics in an academic framework has turned from education to activism, he told Sudbury.com.

And regrettably, of the left-wing kind. From what I can tell, the men cited above are the kind of people who've been perceived on the surface as "right-wing", even though Tate is far from it. In fact, speaking of Islam, it's actually surprising Shyminsky would bring up Tate, because something tells me Mr. Shyminsky's not clearly aware Tate is an Islamic convert who's made abominable comments praising Hamas. Even Ben Shapiro says right-wingers should stay away from Tate, and it's clear he's far from being a conservative in any way by serious western standards. Even Rogan, unfortunately, has been lenient on antisemitism, which dampens the impact of any complaints he might have about what's wrong with leftism. Or does he? And Fuentes isn't an admirable figure either, but a most shameful one. As for Peterson, I'm sure he has flaws, but so far, he hasn't proven as poor an example as the others have, and has spoken in Israel's defense. Let's just say that those who have weak positions on Islamofascism and antisemitism/misogyny do not represent serious conservative values, and there are right-wingers who've made clear why they should be avoided. So I guess it's just a question of, what beef does Mr. Shyminsky have with Peterson, who's a Canadian citizen himself? Jealousy, perhaps? And how come he and the newspaper didn't mention Gaiman? He makes a far better example for citation of toxic masculinity.

It's a shame Mr. Shyminsky appears to be the kind of woke advocate who's rejected the best comics from childhood, for the sake of a confusing, distorted position on characters like Wolverine, whose support for ladies like Mariko and at least a few X-Women goes unmentioned here. It won't be shocking if he's also rejected Superman, and even Lois Lane, as though Siegel and Shuster's hard work was worthless to begin with. On which note, there was an early story in the Golden Age where the Big Blue Boy Scout came to the rescue of a woman who's husband committed spousal abuse. Those kind of history examples go bewilderingly unmentioned here, in what amounts to little more than a contrived diatribe against "toxic masculinity" wherein the whole meaning of masculinity is distorted for the sake of the woke agenda. And all ignores how being selfless and caring for the innocent is something both men and women can support and promote, yet this article fails to make a clear case on anything like that. Maybe the worst part of the puff piece though, is that somebody going out of his way to complain absurdly about masculinity may not have much respect for femininity either.

Labels: golden calf of LGBT, history, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence, X-Men

Marvel's turned out yet another line-wide crossover tale that, if they wanted to, I'm sure they could very easily have published as a stand-alone story, called One World Under Doom. Polygon spoke with writer Ryan North about where they're going with this latest farce in marketing:

Fantastic Four writer (and Squirrel Girl writer, and Dinosaur Comics writer) Ryan North knows why Doctor Doom is the Cadillac of supervillains.

“He’s got all the powers of science, he’s got all the powers of magic. And he dresses like a robot in a cape,” he told Polygon via video chat. “Everything is ‘peak.’ [laughs] And, most impressively of all, he can speak in the third person and have it read as cool, and not ridiculous.”

Comparing a villain to a fine car brand like Cadillac is bad enough. But what's really angering is how a villain once again is spoken about in loving terms, even though there were times Doom was depicted in past years killing people, and I even recall a Fantastic Four issue from the early 90s where he warned one of his military officials that if he failed to retrieve an energy source that landed around Latveria, "death is not a luxury my torturers are known to provide!" Fates worse than death are just as chilling, and this was all but part of Doom's character too. He may have been written as honorable up to a point, but there were writers who could still portray the Latverian despot as potentially lethal. By the way, if memory serves, Doom's practice of magic came during the time Mark Waid was writing FF in 2003, so wouldn't the premise have come awfully late? When North's asked about how to portray Doom in film, he said:

“I’m not an actor,” North answered, “but it seems to me that Doom is probably the hardest character to play in all of the Marvel universe. Because he does have this depth, but also this breadth to him. He can send you back in time for Blackbeard’s gold” — the very outlandish scheme in which Doom entrapped the Fantastic Four in his first appearance — “and he can also trade someone’s soul in Hell and do horrible, horrible things.”

“That’s a huge range for a character,” North continued, “especially for an actor in an hour- or two-hour movie to hit [...] I mean, I’ve spent the past couple of years thinking about Doom, writing speeches for Doom, capturing that voice. And I had the advantage that my output was 20 pages a month, and that gives me time to go for long walks and try to nail down what Doom says on this one page in a few words. I can’t imagine the challenge of trying to do that full time for the year, or whatever it takes, to make a movie.”

But if he had to sum it all up? “I guess it boils down, don’t forget his depth,” North concluded. “He can do anything.”

Umm, a fictional character, both the good and the bad, can only go as far as the writer does. Including in terms of personality, and that's something North didn't address here, apparently because when it comes to villains, only a corrupt personality matters, not whether family relations do. So, what "depth" are we talking about? And say, does the page count indicate they've reduced it by at least two pages? There was a time when there could be more than 20 during the 80s, but it's no surprise that, in an era where superhero comics have turned into a farce, they could reduce the page count because not enough people are reading, and ads clearly take up more importance now. And if memory serves, that part about souls in Hell came up in Waid's decidedly overrated take on the FF from 2003, which may have had questionable political metaphors too.

ComicBook also interviewed North, and a form of political reference that's probably not surprising at this point comes up:

On the surface it appears that Doom means well. He’s in favor of universal healthcare and things of that nature. But there’s always a catch with Doom, and we see that come into play with Baron Zemo and Hydra. How will this game of chess between Doom and our heroes escalate as the series continues?

That’s a great question. Doom is someone who is not just smart but knows he’s smart, and likes to outsmart people. In the first issue, he outmaneuvers the heroes from the moment go by just thinking ahead and being smarter. The story of “One World Under Doom,” for the most part, is seeing these heroes react to Doom being in charge and trying to figure out “How do we stop him? How do we fix this? How do we go against someone who is doing his best to try and get people to like him?”

He’s Doctor Doom, he dresses like a scary robot but he’s trying to get people to like him. If you’ve seen the first issue, that woman he saves at the end repeats his slogan back to him. She’s on board.

I wouldn't be surprised if Doom's the latest comics villain to serve as a metaphor for Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians, and if the following article is correct, Trump might support "universal" health care. Also note the part in the interview about Doom winning over a woman he rescues. One can wonder if the green cape Doom wears is serving here as a variation on the description of Trump as "orange", and the villain himself as a variation on how Trump's been winning over people in the USA and elsewhere. And if that speculation's correct, it's only all the more insulting to the intellect how a classic character's being exploited for more political metaphors. Besides, it's not the first time Doom was ever depicted expressing bizarre "love" and "friendship" for his foes. I recall he tried doing that in the FF during the early 90s too when he captured the Thing at one point (at the time Ben Grimm's face was damaged).

This is your first big Marvel event as the head writer, so what’s it been like collaborating with the different editorial teams, and writers and artists on all the tie-ins and one-shots?

It’s been really fun. I’ve never been in this position before. I’m usually the guy doing the tie-ins, which is also fun. One of the things I wanted to do was have the full event written well in advance so that when people do a tie-in it’s not me saying, “Oh, I think this is what’s going to be happening.” Instead it’s, “Here’s the script, here’s what’s going on this month, you can play with that.”

There’s stuff coming up in Avengers and Iron Man that I’m so excited and honestly impressed, like, “Man, I wish I came up with that. That’s a really cool thing [laughs].” I’m very excited for how this is going to go across. It should feel tied together and organic and really, really cool.

Look how he takes such a casual perspective of universe-wide crossovers, as though there's nothing damaging in the long run about them, artistically or otherwise. Chuck Dixon once pointed out how this has only turned mainstream superhero fare into a joke with less sales, and North's just the latest to normalize crossovers despite the high cost in dollars it now takes up even with just a handful of issues from different series.

Looking at the bigger picture, how has it been to work on the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom when all eyeballs will be on them later in the year with The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Doom joining the MCU?

It’s been fun and gratifiying. I feel like there are people that think of the Fantastic Four as your grandparents’ superheroes. Like they’re old, they’re not that interesting. But they’re great. They’re really great characters and there’s a reason they’ve stuck around for so long.

I think the fact we’re getting this movie with an exciting, relevant cast will help people realize these are some cool people, with a cool world and cool villains and everything. And bring more eyes to the comics, which is always great.

This is where anybody who's a realist can only laugh. For years now, many moviegoers have shown little interest in the comics, and a crossover hardly makes a good jumping-on point, though what's really irritating is how even modern writers won't recommend beginning with the Silver Age FF adventures, even though they've long been available in reprint archives, and could make an excellent pastime for many. The part about some people viewing the FF as the heroes of their grandparents is interesting though, because if this were so, it would confirm the huge problem comicdom has with people disinterested in merit-based entertainment. I wouldn't be shocked if Doctor Strange were viewed the same way, if only because he too can be considered one of the "older" characters in the MCU. If all a certain audience cares about is whether the heroes are young enough, that's ludicrous and makes clear what's wrong with how modern generations are brought up.

Also note how he talks about "cool villains", but not about cool heroes and even co-stars (Willie Lumpkin, anyone?). That's pretty all one needs to know North doesn't have his standards down straight. And doesn't this new FF movie co-star a certain Pedro Pascal, whose political bent is alienating? Some "relevant" cast there alright.

To wrap up, what will be the state of the Marvel Universe once “One World Under Doom” concludes?

How can I answer this one without spoiling? I guess I can say that where this story ends is not where it begins. There are things that come out of this story that are going to have to be dealt with by everyone else.

Everyone always says, “This story is going to have consequences.” There’s stuff beyond this story that I think, “Wow, I’m glad I don’t have to write the next event because this is a big thing to pick up on.”

Oh, does this mean it's not going to be self-contained? Actually, that this is a universe-spanning crossover already makes that part clear enough. If serious writers really wanted to tell a good tale with almost all possible members of a shared universe, they'd do it in a single, stand-alone miniseries, not something where only so many individual series are connected to a wheel hub like spokes on a bicycle. Crossovers today have almost nothing to pick up on that's creative or inspiring, and when it's only written for the sake of serving as a basis for yet another crossover, that makes clear they don't understand why in the long run, crossovers can hurt creativity along with self-contained storytelling. Boy, Jim Shooter sure left quite a mess after he left Marvel that none of his successors want to clean up. And it's to be hoped he'll address it honestly, if ever asked if he believes it crossovers did any good for mainstream superhero stories. Because where everything's led now, even for DC, has become nothing short of a disaster in many ways.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dreadful writers, Fantastic Four, golden calf of villainy, marvel comics, msm propaganda

I looked for more observations about the Neil Gaiman sexual assault scandal, and found, most interestingly, a site called The Wild Hunt, dedicated to news and other items about paganism, who have what to say about Gaiman's offenses, and how writers like him influenced their viewpoint:

Gaiman is a strange figure for contemporary Paganism; he has never, to my knowledge, claimed to be one of us, but his work has been incredibly influential on the movement. My own story is hardly unique – many, many Pagans I know have described how American Gods or, even more likely, The Sandman shaped their perceptions of the gods. It’s not that Gaiman’s work introduced us to Paganism per se, much less to mythology in general – we came to his work because we liked those things already. But he introduced us to a new sort of theology, a conception of gods that we could imagine walking on shattered glass in dirty alleyways as easily as through the halls of Mount Olympus, and it was irresistible. If you have ever seen a DeviantArt drawing of Loki grinning in a hoodie, you have seen an artist only a few links removed from Gaiman.

[...] A recurring theme in descriptions of Gaiman’s assaults is his insistence on being called “Master” and inflicting various kinds of humiliating, degrading, or violent sexual acts on his victims. As the Vulture piece notes, these acts can be done consensually, and indeed, many in the kink community may enjoy them. Gaiman’s representatives played on this in their response to the allegations: “Sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism may not be to everyone’s taste, but between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful.” (Gaiman himself has remained silent since the accusations first came to light last year.)

As Shapiro explains, however, BDSM has a long-established code of community conduct to make sure consent and safety are maintained. If just one party consents, that isn’t kink – it’s abuse and potentially rape.

Even so, BDSM sounds very distasteful, and shouldn't be encouraged as a practice, since it only gives relations a bad name.

There are a couple things I am sitting with, that I have been sitting with since July, and are at the front of my mind today.

First, there will be two competing instinctive responses to today’s article. The first is to burn all Gaiman’s books and damn his name to oblivion; the second will be to declare our love for the art, if not the artist, and attempt to separate them. Neither of these are especially productive approaches in my mind. I don’t think it’s a worthy idea to spend money on new Gaiman projects or promote him as a cool author for new Pagans to read. But as I said at the beginning, he has had a profound influence on modern Pagan culture, and that influence will still be there even if we try to ignore it. We have to grapple with our heritage, even the awful parts of it, and figure out how to grow and evolve beyond it. That can’t happen unless we acknowledge our influences and understand the context in which they arose.

And secondly, and most importantly, is this: Pavlovich, Caroline, and the other women Gaiman has assaulted – and there are surely more than even the eight women documented by Vulture – are real people who have suffered real harm. I think there is a tendency to dismiss this point in favor of focusing on what was going on in the abuser’s head, or the reaction of fans to a fallen creator’s work. I don’t want to say those things should be completely silenced; I opened this editorial by engaging in a few paragraphs of the latter, after all. But as we discuss this news and move forward from it, we should remember their humanity, their reality as human beings, first and foremost. It matters more than our love for a novel or a comic book. Or even for a theology.

We may not see eye to eye on subjects like theology, but glad to see they recognize the gravity of the issue at hand. And yes, there's quite likely more than the number of victims known so far, and we must hope they'll have the courage to come forward as well. But a tale as crude as the Sandman series was serves as "inspiration" for anybody? I'll just never understand that. I don't consider book burning a good example, but I do think it would be good if anybody reevaluates the material and asks whether it was even worth all the trees cut down to print it up. It all felt so hollow, and again, like a leftist propaganda rag. Not to mention that, if the story around issue 40 or so was meant as a metaphor for drug addiction with no objectivity on whether it's a bad influence, that's a serious problem, and Gaiman will have a lot of explaining to do, but alas, likely won't.

Here's also an op-ed from the Indian Express, and it says:

What happens when a literary hero turns out to be a man with feet of clay? When all that he has spoken for — women and underdogs, the power of art to heal, of stories that offer hope and redemption — have been built on an edifice of lies? Gaiman is hardly the first writer with a character flaw. From Pulitzer Prize-winning Junot Diaz and Thirteen Reasons Why author Jay Asher, accused of sexual harassment, to the problematic politics of Ezra Pound, T S Eliot or V S Naipaul, or most recently, Alice Munro’s silence over her daughter’s abuse by her second husband, history is replete with writers with intractable blemishes. It is the fact of the power that they command, that can reduce or silence others into submission, that makes the difference. It also makes a man like Gaiman, with his vociferous support for women’s rights, the perfect perpetrator. When the first allegations came up, a barrage of friends spoke up for Gaiman as if his talent could explain away his occasional, perhaps consensual, profligacies.

[...] Gaiman’s story, or Munro’s, makes for uncomfortable truths, especially because of the integrity they bring to their work, the hope they infuse in it that holds so many of their readers steady, like a friend. But perhaps, that is the purpose of fiction — to offer a neat causality to explain away chaos. In life, people contain multitudes — outrageously talented and ridiculously vain, good and petty; generous yet mean. Life rarely conforms to patterns. Perhaps, that’s why fiction tends to.

Unfortunately, there's fiction stories out there that don't always explain away anything. Badly written stories, of course. And as far as I'm concerned, Gaiman's stories, if anything, are overrated tripe, elevated as they were by "progressives" who apparently know a leftist propaganda item when they see one, and actully think that alone makes it worth the while. Nope. What I read, again, seemed like such hollow tripe with unsatisfying conclusions that don't make them worth the bother. I'll never forgive Gaiman for the Eternals miniseries he wrote in the late 2000s circa the Civil War crossover, which made Sprite look like a scumbag, and ran the gauntlet of making youngsters who claim to have been sexually abused look like liars, and as though such lies are routine (Update: this Time article about one of the disgraced Bill Cosby's children's books makes a similar observation). That was even worse than the moment where Sersi told one the co-stars a gay man liked her because he thought she looked like a transvestite, which was basically saying she looked like a man instead of a woman. Instead of saying she's beautiful, we have to be hit over the head with that insult. It was so forced and contrived, and whatever one thinks of John Romita Jr. as an artist, to think he'd waste his talents on that desecration of Jack Kirby's legacy! A real sad head-shaker. One must wonder if Romita will have anything to say about Gaiman's scandal going forward too.

Next, here's an op-ed from Winter is Coming, where the writer takes issue with Gaiman's non-apology in the first public statement he's made in several months:

There's a little bit more in Gaiman's blog, but what's written above is the bulk of it. Now, I am obviously not positioned to weigh in too heavily on this, but I do want to point a few things out. One is that the timing of this post, which he titles "Breaking the Silence," feels a little transparent. These allegations were first made more than half a year ago, and Gaiman — who used to be notoriously chatty with fans on the internet — has gone radio silent. I suspect that the opening paragraph of his post, which mentions that he didn't want to "draw even more attention" to what he claims is misinformation, explains that.

According to The Bookseller, Gaiman hired crisis management firm Edendale Strategies and lawyer Andrew Brettler to handle his PR in relation to this story. If you're keeping track, that's the same firm hired by That '70s Show star Danny Masterson after he was accused (and later convicted) of rape, as well as Marilyn Manson following sexual misconduct allegations from multiple women. It seems to me that, obviously, Gaiman didn't want this sort of negative press, and was hoping it would go away. I don't think it's too surprising that he's only now responding once this news has reached huge outlets where it can't be swept under the rug as easily. This thing is going to be on news stands now:

Another thing I feel the need to point out is that Gaiman's response is pretty pale in comparison to the sheer breadth and depth of the allegations reported in Vulture, from multiple women with similar accounts, none of whom had ever met each other before their stories became headline news last year. A large news organization like Vulture/New York Magazine is also going to do a fair amount of legal vetting before running a story with such sensitive material, accusing one of the entertainment industry's most recognizable figures (with a lot of money for lawyers) of this sort of gross misconduct. I do not think they did so lightly, or without doing their due diligence.

I'll also add one last thing: reading the accounts of those women, perception and imbalanced power dynamics were a consistent theme that kept occurring in their stories. They often described Gaiman pushing boundaries, and themselves as going along with it for various reasons only to later have to grapple with the reality of their situations. So while I do not doubt that the text messages Gaiman has in his phone read a certain way to him, I also don't really get how that dismisses the first-hand accounts of these women and their lived experiences. Or the NDAs that he had several of them sign to keep their affairs quiet.

"I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's," Gaiman wrote in his response. And from the tenor of this post, and the way it centers him while spending very little time reflecting on the harm done to the women caught in his path, it sounds like that's still the case.

Well he hasn't really apologized, and certainly didn't do so convincingly. That he employed the same PR agency the now incarcerated Masterson did suggests Gaiman hasn't strayed very far from Scientology, which he was part of in his youth, and Masterson too was a Scientology member.

Also of interest is the following info from Richard Corcoran, a former Florida state representative:

https://t.co/XuzEtDuf5O
In May 2023, this guy spoke at the "alternative graduation" of the 2023 New College class, which was backed by those opposing New College's transformation under @GovRonDeSantis. Many faculty and students attending that "alternative graduation" applauded…

— Richard Corcoran (@richardcorcoran) January 14, 2025

Wow, so Gaiman attended a convention organized by liberals opposed to a conservative politician, is that it? Guess that says all you need to know what more is wrong with Gaiman's political conduct, which found its way into his writings years before too, as noted earlier.

And then, the Hindustan Times asks if the Simpsons episode where Gaiman made an animated appearance at least 2 decades ago will see a phasing out from circulation:

Neil Gaiman's sexual misconduct allegations have reignited discussions about his cameo in The Simpsons episode ‘The Book Job.’ [...]

While these allegations can hardly be deemed unimportant or unrelated to actual concern, they have also energised quite a debate regarding Gaiman’s previous participation in media, including his cameo on The Simpsons. Especially all fans are pinning Season 23 of the show, which is focused on the story of the episode ‘The Book Job’, including Gaiman.

‘The Book Job’ is a heist theme, fleshed out by Ocean’s 11, in which Homer becomes a part of a team responsible for writing a best-selling, yet worthless, fictional young adult novel. Here, the primary characters of the cartoon are Bart Simpson and Patty, Moe, Principal Skinner, and others. Gaiman is actually an uninvited man who tries to become the author’s consultant and takes the manuscript from them, pretending to be their friend. As a final punch line, he claims he cannot even read.

Gaiman denies any sexual harassment allegations

A similar precedent exists in the case of ‘Stark Raving Dad,’ the Season 3 episode featuring Michael Jackson. That episode was removed from circulation after allegations against Jackson gained renewed attention. Al Jean, a longtime Simpsons showrunner, explained to The Daily Beast in 2019 that Jackson’s episode was particularly problematic due to rumours that the singer used his guest role to “groom boys.”

However, there are notable differences between the two cases. Jackson’s alleged actions were directly tied to his appearance on the show, as his guest role was central to the plot. In contrast, Gaiman’s role in ‘The Book Job’, while substantial for a guest star, is secondary to the episode’s main story.

Well of course it's not a good example to just censor, but after all these years, I've been reevaluating the Simpsons, and wondering if it was really worth all the celluloid put into its making, based on what politics were brought to the table there, or how woke it's become even before Apu was dropped from the main cast several years ago because some would-be entertainer didn't like the idea Apu would be portrayed as a buffoon with an accent. So was it really funny? Well after 10 seasons or so, far less, and I eventually lost interest, and can't get into it anymore. So what's the point in watching it again? That the producers even hired Gaiman to begin with was bad enough. But the show hasn't aged as well as it could've, and having run far too long at more than 35 years, it's long past the time to retire it. And the saddest part of the TV stories featuring Jackson and Gaiman is that, what we know about the real life figures now will drain much of the humor from the episodes.

It looks like Popverse has finally published something about the affair, if they hadn't before, and it's written by none other than Graeme McMillan, who says:

During all of the above, Gaiman had been notably silent, even as Prime Video essentially cancelled his series Good Omens, replacing the announced third season with one final episode without Gaiman’s involvement, while Disney similarly put its planned adaptation of Gaiman’s novel The Graveyard Book on hold. With the Vulture story prompting new discussion of his disturbing and repeated misbehavior, however, that finally changed — although the author is surprisingly unrepentant. [...]

While this attitude is unusual from abusers newly outed — traditionally, statements about being imperfect and wishing to grow to be a better person are paired with apologies to those they have hurt; notably, Gaiman does not once actually apologize to his victims, instead choosing to outright deny their experience — it’ll be curious to see how Gaiman’s collaborators, in terms of both artistic and business enterprises, respond to such a blanket refusal to engage with the many very serious accusations against him in the weeks and months ahead… and whether Gaiman will find himself re-addressing the situation in a more serious, and ideally more humble, manner in the near future.

Considering McMillan's been an apologist for leftism in his own way, it's pretty amazing he admits Gaiman's response is flaccid and unconvincing. But if this is only the first time they actually reported on the affair, it's pretty late in coming, though certainly better late than never. Upon further searching, I also discovered Comics Beat finally covered the case as well, and say at the end:

None of Gaiman’s publishers, comics and prose, have commented on the accusations, or announced any actions, but with many fans publicly pledging to never read a Gaiman book again, this will obviously impact that side of things as well.

And until now, Comics Beat didn't comment on this either. Oh, and this specific article wasn't written by the credibility-lacking Heidi MacDonald, who, IIRC, worked for DC as an editor at the time Gaiman was there. Some of the commentors noted the lateness of their coverage. For example:

So now that the mainstream media is reporting on this, The Beat feels obliged to do so as well? We need an explanation as to why you have been silent on this for the last six months.

And:

Kind of funny how you guys were prompt to publish stories about Piskor and Ellis but waited like 6 or 7 months for this turd. And only after he issues a public denial lol

The writer himself answered:

I can’t speak to what happened several months ago as I wasn’t with The Beat at the time. For the record though, a version of this article was pending review before we saw Gaiman had finally written a statement, delaying it further: the original title was ‘More Neil Gaiman allegations emerge in New York magazine exposé.’

Well if they were that cowering, what's the use of taking a job with them? This failure to be prompt as possible with the news speaks volumes, and just goes to show why they're so irrelevant, and have been for a long time.

The Times of India points out the double-standard the woke crowd has when it comes to J.K Rowling, as opposed to Gaiman:

Social media has erupted with accusations of hypocrisy directed at liberals who have remained relatively silent about allegations of sexual misconduct against Neil Gaiman while continuing to vilify J.K. Rowling for her views on gender. Critics argue that Rowling has faced disproportionate backlash for her stance on biological sex, while Gaiman, a celebrated author with progressive credentials, has been met with tepid criticism despite facing serious allegations.

[...] Gaiman’s progressive credentials, including his feminist-leaning rhetoric and support for trans activism, have likely shielded him from the same level of backlash faced by Rowling. Critics argue this discrepancy highlights a trend where liberal figures are excused for their actions if they align with the "right" ideological causes, while dissenters like Rowling are relentlessly targeted for their views.

Accusations of hypocrisy have also been directed at the broader feminist and trans activist communities, with many questioning why safeguarding women’s rights, as championed by Rowling, is met with hostility while allegations of abuse by a celebrated male ally provoke muted responses.

See, this is one of the most disturbing parts of the whole scandal. Harvey Weinstein supported similar causes, yet in contrast to Weinstein, whose downfall came even more quickly, the downfall of Gaiman's career was slower, even though some sources were distancing themselves from him soon after the Tortoise Media coverage. This should make clear how dangerous it is when the world is turned upside down.

Book Riot says the silence from the publishing industry on this case is deafening:

On Monday, New York Magazine revealed this week’s cover story: Lila Shapiro’s deeply reported investigation into sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman. It’s a piece months in the making—news first broke of the allegations last July—and which many of us in publishing had been waiting for. Gaiman issued a response on his blog yesterday, which several of his accusers described as, “the same non-apology that women in this situation have seen so many times before.” This morning, the NYT‘s Elisabeth Egan and Alexandra Alter reported on the allegations and Gaiman’s response and noted that, “While some of Gaiman’s television and film projects were dropped following the initial allegations, the responses from his publishers, agents and professional collaborators have been far more subdued.”

“Subdued” is a generous description. Mainstream publications including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and NPR have all covered the story, but responses have been almost entirely absent from within the publishing industry and publishing media, with the exception of a paywalled piece at Publishers Lunch. Gaiman’s agents declined to comment for the Times piece, as did DC Comics. Norton did not respond to inquiries. And HarperCollins and Marvel, two of Gaiman’s most frequent publishers, noted only that they do not have new books coming from him. As for book media’s main players? Nothing from Publishers Weekly. Nothing from Shelf Awareness. Nothing from Lit Hub or the LA Times. I can’t presume to know what my peers at these publications are thinking or why they’ve chosen to stay silent. I’d like to believe they have their reasons. What’s hard to believe is that any of them are good. Readers deserve better.

Well that's certainly saying something, coming as it does from a left-wing feminist site.

STV reports St. Andrews University is backing the student who was victimized by Gaiman, but it's unclear if they'll revoke his degrees:

St Andrews University is supporting a student who has made a number of allegations of sexual assault against the best-selling author Neil Gaiman.

[...] The woman began studying an English literature degree at St Andrews University last year, where Gaiman was awarded an honorary degree in 2016.

The accuser claims to have asked the University to strip the writer of his award due to her experience, however, the honorary degree remains in place.

St Andrews University has confirmed it is providing counselling to the student following the allegations and is monitoring the case “with concern and close interest”.

However, the university did not confirm whether it was considering rescinding Gaiman’s honorary degree.

A spokesperson for the University said: “We applaud the courage of all survivors of sexual abuse, and especially those who have felt able to speak out about it.

“Our priority is the welfare of our student, to whom we are providing support and counselling. We will continue to monitor this case with concern and close interest.”

If they really want to prove they're serious, the university and all other sources who showered Gaiman with undeserved awards will revoke them. Hopefully, we'll never see a statue dedicated to him now.

Now here's an item from The Conversation, which makes an interesting note about the YA genre, but also bizarrely alludes to the 17th issue of the Sandman series as "romance":

Gaiman’s writing has also been criticised for the way it depicts romantic relationships. Shapiro cites the protagonist of Sandman, Madoc, a man who sexually assaults his muse (and, it should be acknowledged, is punished for it). The genre of fantasy more broadly is often criticised for the way it minimises abuse in romantic relationships.

Young adult fantasy literature has been criticised for its depiction of coercive control and how this may influence readers.

Wow, I knew the YA industry itself was rife with wokeness, and only now, somebody has the audacity to let us know it can be that bad? All that aside, the Madoc character may have been punished (but I don't think the Erasmus Fry character was), but the problem is that it still let the Madoc character off very lightly considering the severity of his offenses against Calliope, because he didn't get imprisoned by a court for his crimes. That this was a fantasy story is no excuse. But what's this they're saying? "Romantic"? There's nothing romantic in sexual violence where a man forces himself upon a woman without her consent and causes her only so much terrible pain. Rape is NOT "romance". Nor is sex slavery. As I said before, I saw little that could be considered romantic in what material I read from Gaiman's resume, and after what was told about him by New York Magazine/Vulture, one can wonder if the scandal explains why.

One more item I'll point to here is that Brooklyn Vegan announced Amanda Palmer issued a brief statement, noting that she's currently working on legal proceedings regarding her divorce from Gaiman and custody proceedings, and let's hope she recognizes that he can't be allowed near her son anymore if that's how he was going to behave in the little guy's presence. Their son will surely need psychological aid, considering what he was bound to have witnessed his disgusting dad doing. That a child was present during the sexual abuse Gaiman committed is what makes the incidents alarmingly scandalous, and Gaiman should be charged by police with child abuse for that. We can only hope a legal case is being filed against him now.

Labels: animation, dc comics, dreadful writers, golden calf of LGBT, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, violence