Just a small tiny insignificant event today but one that brought a lot of joy to my heart.
Today comic artist and Star Wars critic Ethan Van Sciver launched his Indiegogo campaign for the Cyberfrog Bloodhoney graphic novel; one of his dream projects.
and how well did it do?
Well for starters the initial goal of $8000 was reached within 23 minutes... and is currently sitting at $31,290. So yes this is another major comic kickstarter success to come out of comicsgate and the surrounding circles.
Sort of rushing this one but I’m in the mood and there’s enough happening in geek circles to keep the energy levels up. Since this should be going out on Memorial day I’ll start with Vietnam War clip.
‘Tunnel rats’ Vietnam War (1967) army report [3 mins]
Balls; huge brass ones. The only thing more dangerous than urban warfare is fighting underground. Yet there are always those who will rise to the occasion.
An interview on the topic of females warriors on the main Baen website.
I know that this is a very sore topic; especially with the nonsense going on with Battlefield V right now. Still a decent read. Women in a combat role is a sign of a broken society or of absolute military desperation. Truth is both scenarios make for pretty dramatic and interesting storytelling.
Zaklog reads The One Black Stain by Robert E Howard [5 mins]
Solomon Kane is always a win.
I wonder how the Vinland story would work redone in science fiction setting?
Catholic Horror Vampire Detective author Declan Finn rips into West Coast Avengers and highlights the many points of failure.
Geeky Bugle talks about the 2011 Thundercats reboot. [13 mins]
He makes the pitch that the 2011 series was clearly written by someone who had played DnD and in effect the show is an old school tabletop campaign. This is an excellent review especially in the wake of the incoming ‘Tumblrcats Meow’ knockoff being sent out to soy down your children and crush their dreams and spirits.
Quick! Explain ComicsGate in one picture!
And speaking of soy? Well at least we have a treatment for that.
Thundercats meets metal.
His Ghostbusters theme cover is also excellent
An older article from Trever Bierschbach from Frags and Beer discussing one of the great flaws in SJW writing. If special snowflakes characters can never have anything bad happen to them there is no way for an audience to get invested or for any real tension to be built up.
A random name generator that covers a very wide selection of things, places, settings and most importantly real world cultures. This helps a lot when you’re trying to come up with names for Space Boer mercenaries. Very useful website.
“Seriously, if you edit out the Han Solo character from this flick, it would be a pretty solid movie! You know how painful that is to say about one of your favorite characters of all time, certainly your favorite Star Wars character, regarding his own frickingfilm!?”
He also covers some of the rumours going around how Solo might have orignaially been an anti-SJW movie under the original directors (who were fired suddenly with a lot a drama.)
This would also explain why Disney Shills (including actual studio personnel) reacted so strongly to Ethan Van Sciver’s Soylo: A Soy Wars Soyry campaign.
Possible happenings in the OSR circles… or probably just the usual bugmen spazzing out over imaginary Trump-Hitler death robots.
Tom from Midnights Edge tells you EXACTLY what he thinks about Solo: A Star Wars Story, [6mins]
It looks like the force is weak with this one.
and no I won’t be seeing it. There were TWO perfectly good Han Solo origin stories in the EU EITHER of which would have made for a decent non-soy based movie product.
Star Wars is dead. Maybe we should stop trying to dig up the corpse?
Yes I’m doing these things again. Sanity is overrated anyway.
Okay let’s start with the obvious news. The first issue of Alt*Hero has been released on Amazon Kindle and physical dead tree copies are promised for two weeks from now. Distribution will be through Ingram and any store with an Ingram account should be able to order it.
Calarts ruins everything.
I still think the real fun starts when Chuck Dixon’s Avalon hits the stands (which is a good reason for your local comic store to set up an Ingram account) as that series is going to have stronger normie appeal than the AltHero series itself but the important thing is that the readers are happy and the SJWs are continuing to REEEEE and call everyone Nazis.
I’ll try to get Issue #1 read by this weekend.
Toy gun commercials for the 50’s and 60’s. [6 Mins]
A fun vision of a lost era. Those tommy guns looked awesome. Of course this was an age there would have been a lot of WWII veterans around to teach the boys about the real deal.
You WILL get the Johnny Eagle theme song stuck in your head. (A small price to pay.)
And all of a sudden I want some nachos.
SF author Michael Z. Willamson gives a long detailed loving rant against the argument that mere rifles are of no use against a tyrannical government.
The section on flawed heroes is definitely worth highlighting. While a protagonist without vices or weaknesses can often be boring in the end we value heroes for their virtues and heroism.
Am interesting and highly educational podcast I stumbled across.
Truth is that now knowing what I know I’m incredibly impressed that there are any local comic stores still open. This gives you an idea just what sort of ruthlessly independent small businessmen would have to be running such stores, in these dark times.
There’s an awful lot of people in Comicsgate who almost get the Culture War (1). So I do have to admit that there’s a certain ironic humor in seeing a number of people who were quite critical of Vox Day’s Alt-Hero project having to nut up and do the exact same thing six months later. (2)
The main (if usually unstated) goal of ComicsGate has always been to force a reform on the existing comics industry, truly a worthy goal. People want the old Marvel and DC comics back. However it increasingly looks like this noble goal is impossible. The old rotten institutions are simply too corrupt and converged.
The solution then is to build anew.
Mark Waid and his jibbering lackeys may have unwittingly forced Diversity and Comics (3) to do just that. By lashing out, bullying and harassing indie publisher Antarctic Press into not publishing Jawbreakers: Lost Souls the Jawbreakers team has been forced to go with what was very clearly a pre-established plan B. They will take the money that they have raised and start their own publisher. Splatto Comics. (4)
Personally I’m trying not to be giddy about this brand new opportunity to burn shit down even harder and faster. One of the stated goals of Alt-Hero was to inspire imitators as the more non-SJW comics being made the faster the industry can be freed from their cancer.
If D&C can pull this off the Alt-Comics movement becomes a true joint offensive.
But it’s noteworthy that Splatto Comics and Arkhaven Comics are going to be taking different approaches, particularly when it comes to digital comics.
This is fine. An ally is by definition is somebody who is not you... which reminds me of something. During WWII the Allies took two completely different doctrinal approaches to strategic bombing (5); with British preferring night bombing to reduce aircraft losses and the Americans preferring daytime operations to increase bombing accuracy. While there was a lot of angry debate at first with each party trying get the other to change their doctrine it eventually dawned on high command that by splitting their bombing effort like this the Allies would be bombing the Axis “around the clock.”
I’d like to think that’s a metaphor for what going to be happening to mainstream comics industry in 2019. Bombs raining drop upon their heads constantly… and the SJWs know that it is coming… and that they are powerless to stop it. Fun times ahead.
Short-ish videos:
Diversity and Comics gives his account about what happened with Antarctic Press and his plans for moving forward. [24 mins]
Again (8:00) the mention of Diamond as the chokepoint. We still don’t have complete details on how Arkhaven is doing distribution but it’s become clear that Vox was right to focus on setting up an alternative method. Again, once this second distributor is set up and running it would not be too hard for other indy publishers to join in.
Raging Golden Eagle gives us the quick version [12 mins]
“What these SJW comic pros are doing with Jawbreakers and Antarctic Press. This is a last ditch desperate attempt to keep their jobs. They cannot allow Jawbreakers to succeed.”
At least I’m not the only one who’s giddy about all of this.
Capn Cummings gives his take and focuses on Mark Waid’s spearheading of this unethical and possibly illegal harassment campaign. [16 mins]
Mark Waid lying.
Mark Waid projecting.
Mark Waid doubling down. (6)
Strictly formula, SJWs are down right mechanical once you understand what you’re dealing.
Longer videos: For people looking for them.
Live Stream discussion with Douglas Ernst and Timothy Lim. [1 Hr 17 Mins]
A very good discussion. Timothy Lim going over his history and relationship to Antarctic press definitely adds a little spice to the meatball.
A Jon Del Arroz Periscope covering the topic. [50mins]
This is a fairly slow paced livestream but Jon covers a lot of key points here. One thing he brings up how Antarctic caving like this sets a very bad precedent; especially for smaller projects that don’t have a large rabid fanbase to stand up for them in the event that their publisher comes under attack. A large project like Jawbreakers can weather such a storm and even grow as a result but anything less than a superstar project is going to be vulnerable to the ‘normal SJW attack pattern.’
End Notes:
1: To be fair a lot them do get it but I get very frustrated with the ones who keep making excuses for what is happening right in front of them.
2: If Vox was right about this. What else is he right about?
3: We’re on the internet. Respect the handle. Use the handle. Besides that’s what everybody knows him by.
4: Also something about a cat. Sadly the only Spanish I know is what I picked up at Taco Bell.
5: Yes WarNerd is going to talk about WWII. Also sky is blue and water is wet. Don’t tone police me, bro.
6: How do you double down on THIS??? I hope he tries.
Related:
A short piece about the collusion to keep Jawbreakers out of stores. I did not think this was a major story at the time.
An older piece where I try to think about the longer term implications of what Vox Day is attempting to do with Arkhaven. Remember he’s approaching this problem mostly as a publisher first.
Diversity and Comics gives a quick update on his recent highly successful indiegogo campaign. [15mins]
However he brings up the very alarming way the comic SJWs are attacking the project. It seems that the gatekeepers and the Circus of Sadness are trying to intimidate retailers to not carry the completed comic.
This I suppose is why Vox Day always preaches the importance of building infrastructure and why the Alt-Hero has slowly evolved into the much larger and comprehensive Arkhaven comics label.
It remains to be seen just how effective this recent attack will be; thankfully the Comic SJWs have failed at so much that I fully expect them to fail at this too.
Of Wolves and Men 