Travis Hedge Coke
Patricia Highsmash
That Comic You Like Has Bad Stuff Attached
by Travis Hedge Coke
You read a comic. You loved it. Five years later, you found out part that perplexed you at the time was a racist joke that was simply outside your awareness.
You read a comic that you kind of enjoyed. A week later, you found out someone who worked on that comic has a history of inappropriate sexual behavior and harassment.
You vaguely remember a comic from your childhood that gives you warm feelyfeels now, but that comic has weird politics.
Do you abandon the comic forever, never touch it, read it, talk about it again? Do you worry that you are at fault for not knowing before you knew?
I wrote this after an X-book writer was accused of things by malicious parties stirring up trouble. I put it away and a penciler on a DC Comics monthly started hinting about the writer he works with and folks are out for blood again. This is not always about what is in the comics, and you may not hate anyone involved.
There are people out there who are, simply, shitty. And, there are good enough folks who will have some flawed politic or express some problematic element in their work.
That is always on them, not you.
You can step away from a comic solely because some fans make you feel like stepping away. You can cut loose a comic with one artist, one writer, an editor, anyone who makes you uncomfortable.
If you supported bad behavior, if you knowingly aided to covering up or allowing abuses, maybe you are at fault. You enjoyed a comic written by a sexual harasser? You loved a comic that had racist coloring or dialogue because they were racist, or defended that they were not so when you knew they were?
That might be you. You should examine yourself, there, and probably listen to somebody who does not have to make you feel better about yourself. And, remember that you did not make the comics and you are not beholden to love and support everything in the comics or regarding those who did make or publish it.
I am not a better person than Cerebus fans because I never liked the comic or found even the earliest issues bizarrely sexist. Neither am I flawed for not having the enjoyment in me that those fans have had.
I had no secret Cerebus knowledge, no special sensitivity.
I have never liked the Outsiders joke that parallels soundalikes, “Halo statue” and “Hello, is that you,” with an exaggerated foreign accent, but I still enjoy most of the Mike W. Barr run on the team & books called Outsiders.
My opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of various Warren Ellis and Jim Steranko comics have not altered for knowing, now, that one is accused of broad abuses and the other is a racist.
That is regardless of and congruous with my feeling as to the flaws or failings in their comics.
There are so many real, verifiable flaws and cruelties in this world, we do not need to make false accusations or malicious suppositions to discredit or devalorize a comic, a writer, a colorist, a publisher.
I do not like the work of a particular comics professional who was recently accused of sexual abuse, but the accusations are not credible and appear entirely manufactured by someone who does not like his comic books to discredit the comics. I do not like this person’s way of talking about comics, even, but that does not mean I have to leap at or hold onto false accusations, false stories. If I am going to criticize him, it will be direct to things I can genuinely point to.
That does not make me a better person than average, certainly, or a mature or somehow more elegant person. I talk a lot of shit, too. I get confused and conflate people or comics. I have misremembered scenes or gotten details wrong in telling a juicy story.
I love many a Mike W. Barr comic, as mentioned above, but I routinely conflate him with Mike Baron, someone I do not believe has worked on any comics I have enjoyed, and I am sure, at some point in the past, this confusion led to me putting my foot in my mouth or putting forward misinformation.
I get confused or misspeak or miss things in the art that signify bigotry in code. None of us know, personally, everyone in comics, from the professionals and the fictional characters to the fans and the lore, the legends and the secrets.
If you know someone is lying, is attacking someone, is abusing trust or abusing people, you have to say or do what you can without putting yourself at too much risk, without putting someone innocent at risk. It is not your responsibility to name names, only because you can, to out secrets because you can, especially if it puts you or others at risk you did not incur through – injuring people yourself.
Omniscience is beyond us. If anyone is expecting you to know all, to have all the angles sorted, they are expecting and demanding too much.
It is okeh to not make up our minds. To not form one call and stick to it always.
Always plenty we do not know.
The best we can do, with what we do know, is our effort to be decent.
