Fourcast! 88: A Thin Line Between Love and Hate
June 13th, 2011 by david brothers |-What’s it take for you to stop reading somebody’s work?
-Do you let a creator’s personal beliefs change how you perceive their work?
-When’s it appropriate to dislike somebody as a person, rather than as an artist?
-We tackle all of these questions and more in a free-wheeling podcast I probably should’ve given a meaner name.
-It’s an interesting question, though.
-I can separate the work from the artist nine times out of ten, but sometimes you learn too much and feel all uncomfortable.
-Feel free to chime in.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-Here comes a new challenger!
-See you, space cowboy!
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I’m not sure if you touched upon this, but I’m curious about what your thoughts are about Micah Wright and his work on Stormwatch. Do you think it was justified for DC to fire him for telling lies about his life that aren’t work related?
i think about this kind of thing a lot. usually when i decline to participate in an artist’s work (comics, movies, prose, whatever) people make fun of me and tell me i need to divorce the artist from the work, i’m being too sensitive, if i took that route i wouldn’t be able to like ANYTHING because everyone is a jerk in some way, etc. but i don’t think it needs to be that cut and dry, i think you can write one creator off for one thing and not write another off for another, it all depends on what the context is.
i think it’s perfectly cool, and sometimes necessary, to write off a creator who you don’t agree with or who does something awful. i don’t know why i encounter so much opposition to that idea, maybe you two don’t encounter that, i don’t know. but in my experience people get so upset by that, i guess because they like the creator in question and they don’t want to feel bad/guilty about it and they still like the work, so they try to attack you and bring you back into the fold or whatever.
for me it’s also not totally about money, it’s also just personal enjoyment. like if i met my favorite comics person and they blew me off or said something mean, the next time i’d try to read their work all i’d be able to remember is that time they were a jerk and feel sad about it, heh.
Cheese-chat!
And yes, in Harry Potter people referred to the main villain, Lord Voldemort, as “You-Know-Who” or “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” because people were so afraid of him. But in the last book it was actually a necessary precaution, because he put a curse on the name, so that if you said it, he or his goons would know exactly where you were and come get you.
The thing about being able to see comics creators saying things on Twitter or forums and interviews, is that it can be really weird if I connect their writing voice in a comic to something they’ve written online. Like, you’ll be reading something a character’s said, and there’s this sense of familiarity that pulls you out of the story, because it now seems like it’s the writer’s voice rather than the character’s. So sometimes I’d prefer to just filter out everything about the creator that exists outside of the comic.
@gary: It’s justified in that you shouldn’t lie to your employer. The specifics don’t matter too much, though I think the lie was pretty dumb and easily proven untrue, which is the worst type of lie.
@Maddy: It’s really hard for me to read Warren Ellis comics for that exactly reason. I spent a lot of time reading his forums/emails/essays, and now I can’t hear anything but his voice when I read his books.
See, if I was on this podcast, I would have been able to inform you guys that the best food in existence is a burger with mozzarella cheese injected into the middle.
Doesn’t Frank Miller’s contradiction and complication make him so much more interesting than people like Warren Ellis who preaches the same goddam thing over and over again?
Ellis is someone who I cannot get into because of his “voice” even though I sometimes respect his craft.