To be fair to Top Shelf, their postage remains the same no matter how many books you add, but it does make their annual sale somewhat less attractive than it is for Americans. Which is a shame, as Top Shelf is one of the best comics publishers currently operating. The temptation now is for me to go for everything in the sale that looks even remotely interesting, just to drive the shipping costs per item down…
When I first discovered it fandom seemed so exotic, yet welcoming. That was old skool fandom, written sf only, which as far as I was concerned was the only fandom. These were my people and I felt safe there. But as has become clear, should have been clear for years if not decades if I had paid attention, that safety is relative. A white bloke like me? Little problems fitting in, but as racefail has shown, as various groping incidents have shown, it may be different for women or people of colour. Fandom is slowly, haltingly grasping for improvements, getting to grips with the idea that yes, it does have to care about racism, sexism, homo and transphobia and so on.
There is a lot of resistance to this idea however, best symbolised in the following quote from the somewhat shit stirring Overheard from the Smof Mailing List Tumblr, taking anonymous quotes from a convention runners mailing list:
“What really disturbs me even more is a rather marked generational divide, again, particularly around the sexual harassment. The most horrific abuse I’ve seen, and experienced, has come from thirty-somethings, roughly. Their eagerness to see and punish harassment worries and befuddles me. I wonder if we’re beginning to see the bitter fruit of helicopter parents and/or the notion that safe spaces are possible. (This latter is a hot button topic for me. No space can be made safe. Safer perhaps, but … I just want to say that I have never felt unsafe at an sf con and am completely boggled by the whole notion.)”
Sometimes it does look like an entire generation of older, entitled, largely white middeclass male fans have to die off before we can get any real progress going, but then I remember Frederik Pohl.
It must be hard to be a rightwing cartoonist trying to cover the Democratic convention. Your Democratic and neutral counterpart had a field day with Clint Eastwood’s senior moment talking to an empty chair doing his best grandpa Simpson imitation, but what can you make fun off? Sure, there’s Clinton, but we’ve all long since grown tired of cigar jokes. So what else can you do but lie?
It’s not the first time shitty cartoonist Gary McCoy went after Sandra Fluke, nor the first time he lied about what she said, how she looks or what her intentions are. Just watch her short speech, less than seven minutes and see if you can find out how McCoy goes from that to what he shows in his cartoon. That’s what you have to do if you have no talent but a burning desire to bless the world with your shitty opinions: lie, bear false witnes, iterate.
Sinfest is a webcomic that got started back in the stone age, in 2000 and quickly gained a lot of buzz amongst the kind of people who read Userfriendly or Sluggy Freelance. It was funny enough, well drawn, much better than the standards of the time, but it never struck me. I read it, but didn’t really follow it. One reason for this is shown in the strip above; it was somewhat on the sexist side, with the main character being a self proclaimed pimp.
But now look below for a recent strip; something has changed. Over the last couple of years Tatsuya Ishida has slowly evolved his comic to the point where he now can make jokes about white knighting and mansplaining. His art has gotten better, his writing has deepened but his politics really have changed and for the better.
I would like to see some more mainstream attention for Sinfest and other web comics like, those that have been slugging on for a decade or more, and how they changed and evolved over the years, or not. Shaenen Garrity already devoted one column at TCJ to it, but I’d love to see a proper interview done, like one of those monsters Tom spurgeon tends to do on Sundays.
