Earlier this week, some women started coming forward on social media to talk about predatory behavior by some fairly prominent comics creators. Aviva Artzy explained some of her dealings with Cameron Stewart with Kate Leth, Marsha Cooke, and Babs Tarr backing her up. Warren Ellis was also name-dropped as someone who's engaged in similar behavior, but details on what exactly he did are a bit more ambiguous at the moment.

These types of revelations, sadly, aren't new. You may recall news stories over the past few years involving Brian Wood, Scott Lobdell, and Scott Allie among others. And stories go back much further. I've talked with women who've experienced some pretty awful sexual harassment (from other people) going back at least to the late 1970s. There are hushed rumors about those particular incidents, and I'd love to get those names published out in the open, but these women have also all specifically asked that I don't. Even the several that have long since left the comics industry specifically because of the crap they had to deal with! So they remain hushed rumors for now, and we can only call out the names that women are willing/able to speak out against.

What's more egregious, though, is that while the harassers and predators in those hushed rumors have consequently not been drummed out of the industry... neither have the people who have been named! Probably the closest comics has had to a "success" in that regard is that Eddie Berganza and Eric M. Esquivel were both fired from DC after their issues were brought to light, but this year they've both joined together under a new publishing banner.

A few years ago, Rat Queens artist Roc Upchurch was arrested for beating his wife. While Tess Fowler stepped in for several issues, writer Kurtis Wiebe had been trying to hire back Upchurch behind Fowler's back. I followed up on the sales data a couple years later and found that, despite many fans saying they wouldn't support a book drawn by an admitted wife-beater, sales didn't seem to be appreciably impacted.

And that's pretty indicative of the larger issue we have in society. A celebrity is found to engage in awful behavior, and while there might be an initial backlash, it usually subsides after a few years and the man (because it's almost always a man) is able to pick up more or less where they dropped off. Now, the Me Too movement that really got going in earnest in late 2017 may have changed the game a bit there but it's a little too early to tell. Bill Cosby is still in prison, but he's only been there about a year and a half. Likewise, people like Kevin Spacey and James Franco have only been out of the spotlight for a couple years. It's unclear how/when/if they might return.

But given that guys like Allie and Wood still have work coming out, I'm skeptical for comics.

Any sort of predatory or harassing behavior needs to be clamped down on by anyone who's witness to it. Comics has no "police" and no "union" to force creators out of the industry. (And even if they did, people could always come back via gatekeeperless webcomics!) Which means that it's up to EVERYBODY in the industry to keep an eye on this crap ourselves. When you see or hear of a creator "grooming" someone younger or sexually harassing them in any way or engaging in any sort of predatory type behavior, stop them. If you can't stop them in the moment, you can help by telling everyone you know. And with social media, it's easier than ever to get word out to comics news outlets to spread the word even farther and faster. But this behavior needs to stop, and if everyone just keeps their mouths shut, that's essentially a license for others to continue.

I recently stumbled on the old Land of the Lost TV show. I know I had seen it as a kid back in the '70s but I remembered almost nothing about it, other than the general notion of the effects being laughably horrible. So I sat down to watch the very first episode, curious to see how they set up the show at launch.

Like many shows by Sid and Marty Krofft, the premise is described in plain detail in the opening theme song. Dad and his two kids are out rafting, the river gets out of control, and they wake up in a land of dinosaurs without a way to return home. The show is then about them surviving and trying to find a way home. From jump, though, things are awful. The theme song is this banjo-driven number -- which seems tonally way out of step with the show -- and they apparently couldn't afford actual acoustic effects as the singer's actually sings the lyric "Land of the Lostlostlostlostlostlost..." fading his voice out in place an actual echo. The visuals are kind of absurd, too -- the river the family careens down is clearly a miniature model set with a live action shot of the raft crudely super-imposed on top of it, the historically inaccurate dinosaurs are a mixture of stop-motion and puppets which I suppose in and of themselves aren't terrible for a 1970s Saturday morning kids show but trying to superimpose the live actors over the shots really didn't work well. The show continues on in that vein with a clunky combination of live action imposed over miniature sets, stop motion sequences that are repeated several times even in a single episode, and sets that look like they were pulled from the bins after they'd been used on Star Trek almost a decade earlier.

So by the time the opening credits were done, I'd more or less written the show off. I figured I'd watch that episode, still curious to see how they set up the initial story, and then go about my life without thinking about it again until I come across a comic con guest list that includes one of the actors.

But what struck me as I watched, though, was that the story was actually pretty solid. They dispensed with additional exposition, and there was an immediate assumption that the family had searched for and found a cave suitable for shelter and had already begun building tools they'd need in day-to-day living. The story actually starts with the family encountering the a primitive race called the Pakuni and making friends with one in particular, Cha-Ka. The writing was actually pretty solid, with a good plot and strong characterization. And despite the bad effects, the actors all committed pretty heavily to their chroma key performances. And interestingly, it didn't include the Sleestaks at all, which is one of the few concepts from the show that I know of. (I couldn't tell you if I actually remembered that from the show itself, or it was something I primarily remember from later pop culture references to them.)

Still curious, I watched the second episode. Another solid effort, this time introducing the infamous Sleestaks. The third episode featured a baby brontosaurus that the daughter rode like a pony. The fourth episode caught my eye because it was written by Larry Niven, a favorite author of mine, and the story dropped the idea that time displacement was not linear -- that you could fall into the Land of the Lost from 1974... or 1862.

As I kept watching, what I saw was some actually reasonably sophisticated storytelling. While each episode was a stand-alone adventure, they kept building on each other. Small character elements are picked up and capitalized on -- the daughter makes a passing comment about being afraid of falling down a deep crevasse in one episode and in a later one, she's shown her deepest fear -- which is mostly her screaming and crying, but it does include a quick line about "I don't want to fall!" That kind of thing isn't huge, but it suggests to an overarching concern on the part of the writers for the characters. They're following each other's lead and building elements to strengthen what the others have put together. I expect there was a show Bible that charted an overall plot structure and major character points, but some of what I'm seeing strike me as small touches individual writers lent to the series.

Where I'm going with all this is that not having the best visuals for a creative piece of storytelling are not necessarily a reason to limit what you do in comics. While the effects in Land of the Lost absolutely do NOT hold up in 2020, the actual storytelling pretty much does. Which I suspect why the show has a following to this day.

There's no reason NOT to start working on your webcomic right now. You might think your drawing ability isn't as good as it should be, or you don't like your coloring or what-have-you. But that's not what captures your audience. It's the storytelling -- separate from the art! -- that draws people in. Andy Weir actually wrote and drew Cheshire Crossing as a webcomic starting way back in 2006 (I wrote about it here!) but he took the same story and had Sarah (Sarah's Scribbles) Andersen redraw the whole thing. The story holds up as well as it did a decade and a half ago, and it's only been visually updated to better fit the newer format. Weir said in the book's preface...

I'm a terrible artist. Always have been. That didn't stop me from making the comic, though. I wanted to tell the story so I gutted it out...

Be like Andy and don't let your own talents stop you. Tell your story. If you improve, great! If you don't, you can still bring people in if you're telling your story earnestly and sincerely. Get a new artist later if you need to sell it to a wider audience! Just grab your pencil or stylus and get going!

We are less than two weeks away from the official publication date of my book, Webcomics! The official release date is June 25 (for both the US and UK!) and it's already available in the Bloomsbury Collections eBook library!

Tom Spurgeon had the chance to read it shortly before he passed away, and had this to say...

I've always been a great fan of Sean Kleefeld's writing: its clarity, its circumspection, and the measured quality of his tone. Kleefeld is an ideal writer to chronicle the rise of modern webcomics. He patiently explores not just the nascent realities of an industry in flux but all of the roads not taken, all of the false starts and dead ends, with the perspicacity an unformed future demands. In Kleefeld's hands, defining what comics looks like today is less a sorting out process for the ages than a mad crash down a steep hill hoping to scoop up some village's bouncing wheel of cheese set loose on the valley below. By the time you're through, you'll know just what set of circumstances won the day, and what set didn't and what might be yet to come. The longer you take to find and read your own copy is the amount of time I get to be smarter than you.

I would've loved to have talked with him in person about it. He always had an astute view of the comics industry as a whole, and I can't tell you what it means to me that Tom liked it. I still miss him.

But I still like talking about webcomics with everybody! If you're interested in talking with me, I'd be happy to chat! I'm open to interviews, podcasts, AMAs... whatever outlet where you've got a webcomics-interested audience! (Which, frankly, should be ANY audience! If you're online, you're probably reading webcomics whether you know it or not!) Shoot me an email at sean@seankleefeld.com and we'll get the details sorted! I've spent a LOT of time thinking and writing about webcomics, and I'd love to share what I've discovered with everybody!

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Comics to Help Figure Out How We Got Here
https://ift.tt/30lKpBC

Kleefeld on Comics: The Last Band on Earth #1 Review
https://ift.tt/2UoLAfK

Patreon: Webcomics Textbook: Glossary, Part 3
https://t.co/jsQLjvHLFF

Kleefeld on Comics: Same As It Ever Was
https://ift.tt/2XMPUrw

Kleefeld on Comics: APB Artists against Police Brutality Review Redux
https://ift.tt/3cTntfy

Patreon: Webcomics Textbook: Resources, Part 1
https://t.co/jsQLjvHLFF

Kleefeld on Comics: They Shoot Black People, Don't They? Redux
https://ift.tt/3dUo0zi

Last night, Keith Knight gave an online presentation on behalf of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library, which I sadly missed. But he's been giving talks about race and police brutality for years. This a review of his book They Shoot Black People, Don't They? that I ran back in 2015 and is, sadly, still very relevant.

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Last year, amid the summer of Ferguson, Missouri's protests, cartoonist Keith Knight realized he'd been drawing cartoons about police brutalizing and killing people of color for two decades. He went through his archives, pulling out many of the old strips, and built a presentation around the work that he started touring with it in November 2014 under the title "They Shoot Black People, Don't They?" It's been fairly well-received by my understanding, so when Knight put it together in book form earlier this month, I was curious to see what he had to say.

The book collects all the strips Knight uses in his presentation, plus a few more. I've found Knight does his best work when he's really passionate about a topic, and this certainly fits the bill. Which means that the comics here are of a very high calibre. Very insightful and poignant, with some brilliantly ascerbic takes on many ripped-from-the-headlines events. Many of the strips refer to specific incidents, which are not always immediately evident; the strips were written in the context of current news, so some incidents, particularly the older ones, may not resonate now as much as they once did. Which is true of any political cartoon, but the 20 year time-frame on the book's contents make some more accessible than others.

Interestingly, and to help counter some of that, Knight also includes some notes about the strips. Presumably, it's much of the same type of thing he talks about in live presentations. He makes note of some of the specific people and events that sparked some of the cartoons, and provides some additional background and context.

He also includes a fifteen point list by Chuck Creekmur on what you can do help stop police brutality. Some of the points are only relevant in particular circumstances, but others are more general. I strongly suspect Knight relays this same material in his presentation. And as Shaun King said in a quote Knight includes in the book: "If you ever wondered what you would do if you were alive in the Civil Rights Movement, NOW IS THE TIME to find out." It's clear that Knight is not just looking for another vehicle to peddle his work, but he's (understandably) troubled and concerned about this issue and is trying to use whatever platform he has to affect change. He's using his cartoons to alert people to what's happening, and then providing resources for how to change that.

The book's intentions are noble, certainly, and the cartoons have a fierce edge to that most cartoonists don't use. The only complaint I can lodge here is that Knight's additional notes are not printed in the book itself, but included as a set of additional pages. There are a few notes printed in the book alongside some of the comics, so Knight certainly had some idea to include additional context, but I'm not sure why most were printed up separately.

But the book itself is brilliant at making you laugh with rage. If you're like me, and can't see Knight present this material in person, this is the next best thing. Available directly from the artist for either $16 (regular) or $45 (artist's edition).

I originally ran this review back in 2015. Seems like a reasonable time to run it again. Sadly.

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Black men are stereotyped in a number of different ways. One of the primary ones is as the "angry Black man" -- the guy whose perpetual rage is barely held in check and could explode into violence at any second. It's how police viewed Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Darren Wilson, the officer who murdered Brown, said exactly that: "The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked."

As with all stereotypes, it's bullshit. It's an attempt to justify dehumanizing an entire group of people to fit your own prejudices, so you can stroke your own ego and feel superior. Bull. Shit.

It's not that Black people don't have a right to be angry! They have LOADS of reasons to be angry right now. And many of them are indeed furious. Even setting aside past problems that have never been fully addressed (like, you know, slavery and lynchings), you've got: people today who deny racism even exists, the high per capita volume of Blacks that are incarcerated, having a "Black-sounding" name means it's less likely to have your resume looked at favorably, the average white household has 22 times as much wealth as the average Black household, increased security in urban schools with predominantly Black students despite most school shootings occurring in suburban schools with predominantly white students, deliberate and ongoing attempts to suppress Black votes...

But anger does not always beget violence.

When the officers who killed Eric Garner were officially not even indicted for their acts, editor Bill Campbell, like many others, was enraged. But he didn't go busting windows or start throwing rocks at police. He called Jason Rodriguez and John Jennings, and they chose to make something. They were all sick of the regular feed of news where police were given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, up to and including murder, Black citizens without consequences as long as they said they feared for the lives. But instead of unleashing their anger with destruction, they unleashed it with creation.

APB: Artists against Police Brutality is a compilation of pieces gathered together on the subject of how the police treat Black people. There are comics and pin-ups and essays, some are recollections of bad personal experiences the creators had with officers, some are biting satire, some are more analytical examinations like how the very notion of comic book superheroes itself suggests that the justice system is flawed. (I should note that "flawed" does not mean "broken.") Some of the pieces are more metaphorical; others frightfully aren't.

As with any anthology, some pieces are better than others and some pieces resonate more than others, but they are all created from a deep emotional place from each of the creators. There's a huge line-up of creators here, and I imagine most of the invitations went something like...

"Hey, this is Bill Campbell. I'm putting together a comics anthology called Artists against Police Brutality where..."

"I'M IN!"

Every work in here is deeply personal. Regardless of how they approached the topic here, this isn't about Garner, or Brown, or Rice regardless of how frequently their names get invoked. This is about Ytasha's uncle, and Melanie's dad, and Lance's kids, and Jerome's nephew... This is personal. This is personal because every one of these creators has seen people in their immediate family arrested, beaten, and/or killed by police because of the color of their skin. I'm not talking about some distant relative who's been dead a hundred years; I'm talking about people in their immediate family circle. I almost added "that they talked with and knew" but Melanie's father was buried three weeks before she was born. These creators all have something to say about police brutality, and it all comes from personal experience.

I'll be honest: this was a hard read. Not because the stories were poorly done, but because they're painful. They come from a place of pain and anger and frustration. And creator after creator has these stories of police encounters that went south. Not all of them end in death, and some of the messages are quite hopeful. But the point is that every creator has these stories. These aren't one-off instances of some rogue bad apples. These are tales that point to a systemtic problem in the structure of the organization itself. No one here is saying all cops are bad, or all cops are violent, or all cops are racist. They're saying the system itself is fundamentally unjust. Let me repeat that: No one here is saying all cops are bad. They're saying the system is fundamentally unjust.

And while the one or two stories you might hear on the news might sound like isolated incidents, having so many of them collected here in one book says otherwise. And while that makes for difficult reading, it also makes for important reading, particularly if you haven't experienced these types of problems first-hand. This is not one voice crying in the wilderness, this is Ashley A. Woods and Keith Knight and Lalo Alcaraz and Dean Haspiel and Ytasha Womack and Lance Tooks and Tak Toyoshima and Barbara Brandon-Croft and...

If you didn't understand why Ferguson blew up, you should get this. If you heard "Black Lives Matter" and tried to counter with anything, you should get this. If you've ever wondered why your friends who are people of color are more reticent to interact with the police than you are, you should get this. For that matter, if none of your friends are POC in the first place, you should get this. What's in Artists against Police Brutality is the reality for an increasing number of Americans; you should be aware of what's being done to them.

A smattering of cartoons from the late 1960s and early 1970s...